


The Magician's Assistant

by pinecontents



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Alternate Universe - Never Met, Aromantic, Asexuality Spectrum, M/M, Magic, Strangers to Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:21:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 47,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28510341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinecontents/pseuds/pinecontents
Summary: Link Neal makes his living as a live-in personal assistant, working in the background to do whatever his employer needs to be successful. Errands? Planning? Accounting? He can do it all, and he's seen it all, too.Until now. Getting used to a new employer and a new place to live is hard enough, but this time, Link's new employer is a magician, and his house is full of magic...
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 282
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks, as always, to sohox for her friendship and encouragement.

“Link!”

Link’s eyes snapped open at the sound of his name. He glanced over at his alarm clock. It was 12:48am, not even two hours after he’d gotten into bed. He rolled over and closed his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t hear his name called again.

He did.

“Link, could you come up here please?” Rhett’s voice sounded tight and stressed, even though the low quality, crackly intercom. “There’s kind of a situation and I could really use a hand. Um…”

Link groaned and scrabbled around on his bedside table for his glasses and eye black. Possibly, he thought, not for the first time in the past six months, he should have asked more questions before taking this job. He sat up and pushed the button on the intercom over his table. “Coming, just give me a minute.”

“Link, I don’t _have_ a min--” Rhett’s voice got cut off with an electronic squawk. Either he’d taken his hand off the button, or the intercom itself had been damaged. Neither was good.

“Shit.” Link swiped a smear of makeup under each eye, threw on his glasses and ran to the door at the end of the hall. He opened it and ran through, slamming it behind him, and then immediately turned around, opened the door, and ran back. Instead of his bedroom door, there was now a blank wall, and where a blank wall had been before, there was now a flight of stairs. 

“Stupid _fucking_ magic house,” Link mumbled as he took the stairs two at a time. He patted the wall as he ascended. “No offense, not your fault.” Rhett said the house wasn’t alive, but he was wrong about enough other things that Link didn’t really trust his judgement.

He reached the top of the stairs and looked around frantically for Rhett. The lab looked like a bomb had gone off, but Link could see a foot clad in a gray sock sticking out from behind the counter. He carefully picked his way over to find Rhett lying on his back, with his right hand clutched to his chest like it was injured. There was some kind of tarry black liquid splattered all over him. “Rhett, are you okay? What did you _do_?”

Rhett looked up at him, looking equal parts embarrassed and terrified. “Something really, really stupid.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Full disclosure before we begin, Mr. Neal. This is a… difficult placement.” The interviewer ran her finger down Link’s resume. “Although you’re more qualified than the others were.”

 _Others_? “How many?”

“Four in six months.”

Link frowned. That was a hell of a turnover. “What makes it so difficult?”

“The client is, shall we say, eccentric.”

“Oh, _eccentric_ ,” Link said in relief. Not cruel, not a creep, eccentric. “I can deal with eccentric.”

“I thought you might,” the interviewer said. “I understand your previous employer became a nun.”

“She just started the process so she’s not a nun yet, but yes. She said she wished I could come with her, but nuns can’t have Earthly ties. And then there’s the whole, you know, being a man issue.” Link gestured to himself and smiled. He’d been Bernadette’s personal assistant for six years, and she’d always been a devout Catholic, but her decision to give up all her worldly ties and become a cloistered nun had been a bit of a shock. “I can say the rosary in Latin, but I didn’t put that on my resume.”

The interviewer laughed. “I can’t imagine that would come up very often.”

“Not really,” Link said. “So what kind of eccentric are we talking here?”

“Mr. McLaughlin is a magician.”

“Like, on stage?” A stage magician would probably be equivalent to an actor. Actor level eccentric was easy. Actors didn’t usually have near daily visions of the Virgin Mary.

“Um, no.” The interviewer pursed her lips like she was about to say something she didn’t like. “A magician in the original sense.”

“He does magic? Like, as a job?”

“Correct.”

“Whoa.” Most people could do a little magic, at least the simple stuff like Leibowitz’s Incandesence, but magic as a profession had mostly died out around the time of the Industrial Revolution. Being a magician as a profession was like being a blacksmith or a weaver--it was obsolete and a lot of people dabbled in it as a hobby, but there were very, very few who were good enough and dedicated enough to make a living that way.

“So you’ve reviewed the job responsibilities and the compensation,” she said. “This is a live-in position, so if you’re interested, the next step would be an interview with Mr. McLaughlin at his house.”

The responsibilities were totally within Link’s capabilities and the compensation was more than adequate. A live in-position would also free him from his current Craigslist roommate situation, which would be great. “I would like to proceed.”

“Fantastic!” The interviewer tapped on her keyboard and Link pulled out his phone. “Let’s get you scheduled.”


	2. Chapter 2

Link knew the wizard wouldn’t really live in the stone tower he was imagining, but he also didn’t expect a tall, thin Victorian painted lady done up in shades of pink and coral. The first tulips of spring were beginning to bloom in front of the porch, and it looked like whoever had planted them had chosen the bulbs to match the house. It was gorgeous, and Link wanted to live there immediately.

He parked at the curb and walked up to the door. It was painted a goldenrod yellow and had an inset stained glass panel of climbing roses. Instead of a push button, the doorbell was a little brass tab. Once Link figured out he had to turn it like a key, he gave it a couple healthy cranks and waited.

And waited.

Link checked his phone. He was on time, it was the right day… he licked his lips nervously and rang the doorbell again. The woman from the employment agency had given him Rhett McLaughlin’s phone number, but Link found himself strangely reluctant to use it. He was reaching out to ring the bell a third time when he caught a glimpse of movement behind the glass roses. He hurriedly dropped his hand and stook a step back as the door was yanked open.

“Yes?” said the man who answered the door. He was extremely tall, with curly dark blonde hair pushed back from his forehead and a beard to match.

“Um, hello,” Link said politely. “I’m looking for Rhett McLaughlin.”

“You found him,” the tall man said, eyes narrowed. “And you are?”

“Ah…” The wizard was wearing a pair of silvery pink velour track pants, a black t-shirt with a bleach stain on the hem, and a gauzy white robe spangled with cartoonish stars that Link had totally seen at Urban Outfitters in the Women’s Lounge section a few weeks ago. Not exactly what Link thought of as wizardly. He tried to rally. “I’m Link Neal.”

All that got him was a blank stare. “From the Carillion Agency,” Link added. “The personal assistant position?”

“Oh.” The suspicion fell from the tall man’s face. “Guess I lost track of time. Come on it.”

“Ohhh…” Link sighed as he stepped inside. The interior of the house was just as beautiful as the outside. There was an inlaid parquet floor and elaborate wooden trim with matching built in shelves. The woodwork and finishes might have been original, but the furniture and decor were modern, in soft shapes and warm neutral shades that were cozy and inviting. “Mr. McLaughlin, this house is amazing.”

“Thank you. I put a lot of work into,” the wizard said. “And please call me Rhett.”

“Rhett,” Link repeated. “Nice to meet you.” He held out his hand and Rhett shook it briefly.

“So, I’m going to cut to the chase here,” Rhett said, folding his arms. “The woman at Carillion said she thought you might be a better fit than the last two.”

Link raised his eyebrows. The interviewer told him there had been four previous assistants.

Rhett noticed his expression. “There were some others that I tried to hire myself before I decided to get someone else to go through resumes and check references. I don’t have time for all that.”

“Oh, okay.” That seemed pretty reasonable to Link, but there was something he was curious about. “Um, what exactly did she say about me?”

Rhett motioned for Link to follow him into the living room. “She said you had a lot of financial experience and your last employer had daily episodes of religious ecstasy so you could probably deal with a little magic.”

Link nodded to himself in agreement as he sat. Magic would probably be less disconcerting than being around Bernadette when she was having a vision. The way her eyes filled with tears and fixed on something he couldn’t see was deeply unsettling. He didn’t mention that to Rhett, though. “I’m a CPA.”

“Good, because I have totally lost control of my finances,” Rhett said. “Like, I know there’s enough money, and I don’t usually miss bills, but I have no idea how much comes in and how much goes out.”

“What kind of records do you have?” Link asked. Unless Rhett did everything in cash, Link could work his way back through Rhett’s accounts, but it would be easier if he didn’t have to start from scratch.

Rhett looked a little embarrassed. “Um, I tried keeping a spreadsheet for a while, but mostly I just throw my receipts in a box.”

It was better than nothing. “I can work with that,” Link said. “But I’m dying of curiosity. How do you make a living from magic?”

“I make magic objects,” Rhett answered.

“Magic _objects_?” Link’s jaw dropped. “I thought those didn’t work anymore!” Much like the number of magical practitioners dropped as the use of technology rose, the strength of magical objects dwindled in the early 1800s until items that once been the source of great power became nothing more than their mundane selves. The last known working magical object, a pair of iron rings from Nigeria that allowed the wearers, as long as they were within eyesight of each other, to speak as easily at any distance as if they were standing next to each other, stopped working in 1903.

“Not like they used to, no,” Rhett admitted. “It’s a bit of a lost art, like Damascus steel or Roman cement. World War I and World war II pretty much wiped out the practice of magic, and it didn’t really come back until the sixties.”

“Oh,” Link said.

“Yeah. Once in a while I’ll get to do something big and interesting, but for the most part I make toys for rich people, like glowing crystals that orbit around your head, rings that fit any finger you put it on, that kind of thing. Boring, but it pays the bills.”

“I had no idea that being a wizard involved busy work,” Link said.

“I’m not a wizard, I’m a magician.” Rhett noticed Link’s questioning look. “Um, a magician studies and uses techniques from all branches of magic. Wizardry is a specific type of magical practice.”

“Oh. I don’t know anything about magic.” The job description hadn’t mentioned magical ability or experience. If it did, Link was screwed. He could barely perform Leibowitz’s Incandescence, which most people mastered by the time they hit first grade.

“You don’t need to.” Link inwardly let out a sigh of relief. “You just need to stay out of my way and take care of all the boring stuff.” Rhett dismissed the whole concept of _the boring stuff_ with a wave of his hand.

“I can do that.”

“The house does have a number of magical features, though. Is that going to be a problem?”

“Uh.” Link blinked. “I guess that depends on what they are.”

“Then let’s go upstairs so you can see your room.” Rhett stood abruptly and headed for the stairs. Link trailed apprehensively behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

The wide staircase had turned wooden balusters and a cobalt blue carpet runner sprinkled with little silver stars. Instead of a wooden finial, the newel post was topped with a great orb of clear quartz. Link gently touched it with a finger as he passed, to see if it would light up, but nothing happened.

At the top of the stairs, Rhett turned right and gestured through an open door. “Your office, should you choose to accept it.”

Link peered in. It was a smallish room, but it was light and airy. There was a filing cabinet, an L-shaped desk with a computer and a bunch of papers haphazardly dumped on it, and what looked like a pretty nice office chair. 

There was also a stack of bankers boxes. Link eyed them suspiciously. “Are those all receipts?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Rhett said. “Mindy--she was the last one--did that.”

“May I ask why she quit?” Link said in his politest voice.

“She couldn’t deal with the door. Said it was unnatural.”

“The door?”

“Yeah.” Rhett pointed to a door on the left of the staircase. “That door.”

Link frowned at it. It was a dark-stained wood that matched the rest of the woodwork in the house, but it had two glass doorknobs. The knob on the right was cobalt, and the one on the left was opaque milk glass. “Two knobs?”

“Try the white one,” Rhett suggested. Link did. It was locked. “You can’t open it, because it goes to my room and the workroom upstairs.” Rhett pulled the door open, showing a hallway with a door and a staircase on the right side. There was a window with a stained glass panel showing a sunset over an ocean at the end of the hall. Link peered through the door, fascinated. “If you end up taking the job, I’ll properly introduce you to the house so you can get through if you need to.” He closed the door and stepped aside, gesturing to the cobalt knob.

It turned easily under Link’s hand, and he opened it to show the same hallway with the same stained glass window at the end, but this time the right side of the hallway was blank, and there were two doors on the formerly blank left side. “No _way_ ,” Link breathed in disbelief. 

“Way,” Rhett said.

Link walked through the door cautiously, but it didn’t feel any different from any other doorway. His footsteps were silent of the blue carpet runner. He poked his head in the bathroom--toilet, sink, mirror, shower, window made of little panels of cobalt and pebbled clear glass. Pretty standard.

The bedroom was more interesting. There was a battered oriental rug on the floor and the furniture was obviously all antique, but the bedding, curtains, and decor were all modern. Link never would have thought to combine styles like that, but it worked.

“It’s not to everyone’s taste, I’m afraid,” Rhett said.

“I love it.” Link crossed over to the rolltop desk in the corner and slid the top up. It moved smoothly without catching. “Nice.”

“Let’s go downstairs and talk some more about what your actual responsibilities would be,” Rhett suggested. “Are you a coffee drinker or a tea drinker?”

“Coffee,” Link said as he followed Rhett down the stairs.

“Well, you’re in luck, because I just got a new cappuccino machine…”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Three hours and two americanos later, Link had a better idea of what being a magician’s assistant would be like. Happily, it didn’t involve any actual magic. He would handle all of Rhett’s business responsibilities, keep track of and order supplies, take care of delivery and shipment for all finished orders, and run any errands that needed running.

“Basically, I wanna be able to focus on more interesting projects,” Rhett explained. “Like the door upstairs.”

“How does that work, anyway?” Link asked. He still couldn’t quite believe that what he’d experienced was real.

“You know Schrodinger’s Cat?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s nothing like that, but that’s probably the easiest way for you to think of it.” Rhett laughed at Link’s frown. “It is!”

Link rolled his eyes. The conversation moved on to Link’s hours (whatever he wanted them to be, although Rhett would occasionally want him to be on call), whether he could have guests (“Yeah, they won’t be able to go upstairs without your permission, and they won’t be able to go into my part of the house unless _I_ invite them.”), and division of chores (“I’m not expecting you to be my maid, but I do expect you to clean up after yourself.”).

“So I assume you’ll want to sleep on it,” Rhett said. “But how are you feeling about the job?”

“Pretty good, I guess.” Link smoothed a hand across his legal pad, where he’d taken notes on their conversation. “The administrative stuff, I can do all that. It’s just… four in six months?”

Rhett sighed. “I knew this would come up. Okay, so the most recent one was Mindy. She thought she’d be okay with the doors and stuff, but she really wasn’t. Before that was Juan. He quit because I woke him up in the middle of the night twice in three weeks, which is expressly part of the job. The second one was Martin, and I found him trying to steal stuff from my lab, so I gave him three choices: he could leave by himself, I could call the police, or I could turn him into a toad.”

Link’s eyebrows shot up. “You can do that?”

“What, call the police? Sure.” They both giggled. “Nah, even if that was possible in the past, which I highly doubt, by the way, magic is too weak now to change anything that drastically.”

“Huh,” Link said. “I can’t believe someone from Carillion stole from you. They’re super thorough with their background checks and references.”

“Oh, I hired Martin myself,” Rhett said. “I went to Carillion after that, because I _obviously_ don’t know what to look for.”

“What about the first one?”

Rhett’s expression grew pained. “A friend, actually. I’ve known her for fifteen years, so I thought I knew her pretty well, but it turned out she wanted to be business partners. We started fighting and it got so bad that she told me to go hell and blocked me on everything. And that was the end of our friendship.”

“I’m sorry,” Link said. “That sounds awful.”

Rhett shrugged. “What can you do?”

Link shrugged back. “Hire a stranger, I guess.”

“Bingo.” Rhett gave him double finger guns, which Link found strangely charming. “So sleep on it, take a couple days, whatever. Honestly, you seem like a much better fit than any of the others, but it’s your choice.”

“Thank you.” Link got up and Rhett led him to the door. Link held out his hand and Rhett shook it. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Rhett opened the door with its stained glass panel of calla lilies and Link walked out. Rhett closed it behind him.

Wait a second. _Calla lilies_? Link whirled around and stared, open-mouthed, at the changed door.

“Whoa,” he whispered.


	4. Chapter 4

Link could hear the screaming and gunfire before he even opened the apartment door. He sighed as he unlocked the door.

“Take _that_ , you stupid motherfucker!” Ethan shrieked at the TV. His thumbs moved frantically on the controller. “Yeah! Bet you don’t feel so smart now, dumbass!” He didn’t acknowledge Link’s entrance. He probably didn’t even notice Link at all.

Link kind of hated Ethan. He wasn’t a slob and he seemed like a genuinely nice guy when he wasn’t playing video games, but he played video games _all the time_. Link honestly wondered where Ethan got the energy to scream at people for hours. There was one Saturday where he played for fifteen hours straight, and screamed the entire time.

On the other hand, Ethan rented the spare bedroom in his apartment for a very reasonable price with a month to month lease.

Link hid himself away in his room and put on his noise cancelling headphones, which had been a fantastic investment. He looked around the room. One of the reasons that he’d rented this place was that it came furnished--Link had lived in Bernadette’s house for six years. He didn’t own any furniture.

Ethan’s furnishings, though functional, were… lackluster. It was all as cheap and basic as possible. Link had broken one of the dresser drawers three days after moving in, just by pulling it open. If this room had been on AirBnB, Link wouldn’t have even bothered to open the listing, no matter how cheap it was.

He thought about the bedroom at Rhett’s house, the four poster bed, the rolltop desk, the oriental rug. He thought about the cobalt blue carpet and the cobalt blue window panes and the cobalt doorknob. He thought about the quartz sphere and the magic doors, the one that changed when you were away and the one that led to the same hallway in two different ways.

Link pulled up a new email and started a message to the interviewer at Carillion.

_Hello Phyllis,_

_I met with Rhett McLaughlin at his house this afternoon…_

He wrote a summary of his meeting with Rhett with a bit about how beautiful the house was, although he left out any mention of the house’s magical features.

_I’ve decided to accept the position, if Rhett agrees (and it seemed like he would). I can start immediately, although I won’t be able to move in right away as I will need to give a 30 day notice at my current apartment._

Or, Link thought, maybe he’d move out sooner. As long as he paid his last month’s rent, Ethan wouldn’t care. He probably wouldn’t even notice.

Link gave his email a final once over and fired it off. He opened a new document.

_Ethan--_

_You are by far the worst roommate I have ever had, and I’m including the guy who left fruit on the counter until it rotted and wouldn’t let anyone throw it away._

_There is something wrong with you and you need to see immediate medical attention. Your blood pressure must be ridiculously high and I’m honestly surprised your head hasn’t exploded. It’s not normal, and you need help._

Link snickered to himself as he deleted everything and started over.

_Ethan--_

_Please accept this email as my written thirty day notice…_

That one didn’t get sent, because it would be very stupid to do that before making sure he got the job. Link saved it to his drafts.

Very, very faintly through his headphones, he could hear yelling and explosions from the living room.

 _Please let me get this job_ , he thought. _Please._

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link did get the job, and he put in his notice with Ethan immediately. Even if the job with Rhett fell through, Link had to get out of that apartment.

He arrived at 9am on his first day as Rhett’s assistant and rang the bell. The stained glass panel depicted some kind of tree covered in pink blossoms that Link didn’t recognize.

“Hey,” Rhett greeted Link when he opened the door. He had a long, silky dressing gown on over joggers and a white undershirt. Link thought he looked like a cross between Hugh Hefner and The Dude from The Big Lebowski. “C’mon up to the lab so I can introduce you to the house.”

“Is the house… alive?” Link asked carefully as he followed Rhett up the staircase. He touched the quartz sphere, but once again, nothing happened.

“Nah,” Rhett said. He reached out and grabbed the milk glass knob. “At least, not what most people would traditionally think of as ‘alive.” 

What the hell did _that_ mean? Link wondered. Rhett led the way up the second staircase, which was much narrower and steeper than the grand staircase. Link wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting to find at the top, but the airy, open space surprised him. He froze at the top of the stairs. “Oh, wow.”

The space had steep, sloped walls that met high overhead. There were dormers with the same sort of cobalt and pebbled clear glass windows as the one in Link’s bathroom on every side, which let in a surprising amount of light. There was a little study area set up next to the stairwell, with a rug, a comfy chair, and hundreds of books on built in shelves. The rest of the space was filled with a long table, with counters and cupboards and shelves lining the walls, and everywhere there were fascinating little objects. Link was struck with a powerful urge to tidy the room up, mostly because that would give him an excuse to look at everything, but also because it was a mess.

Rhett watched Link with a little smile on his face. “Pretty great, huh?” he asked. 

“It’s amazing,” Link answered truthfully.

“Okay, I’ve got everything set up over here so--don’t step on that!”

Link froze, foot hovering above the empty floorboards. “Step on _what_?”

“The grid!”

“ _What_ grid? I can’t see anything!” Link wobbled and started to panic. “I’m gonna fall!”

“Shit.” Rhett stepped over something Link couldn’t see and grabbed his ankle. He carefully guided Link’s foot down. It was a little awkward, but at least Link wasn’t going to fall. “Is that okay? Good. Don’t move.”

Link stood and watched as Rhett opened a cupboard and dug around in it, quietly cursing to himself. Apparently whatever he wanted wasn’t in the cupboard, because he closed it with a bang and opened a drawer instead. “Aha!” he exclaimed, pulling out a flat object. Rhett walked back over and handed it to Link. “Look at the floor in this.”

Link took the proffered object and inspected it. It was a side view mirror from a car, complete with the _OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR_ warning. He held it so he could see the reflection of his feet and gasped.

There was a grid drawn on the floor in what looked like thick black marker. Rhett had placed his foot so that it avoided all the intersections. Link angled the mirror around and saw that there were words and symbols in some of the squares. “So, uh, usually people can see that?” he asked, trying to sound more casual than he felt.

“Yeah.” Rhett ran his hands through his hair, thinking. “Um, you better go sit down. Just don’t step anywhere where two lines intersect.”

“Okay.” Link carefully picked his way over to the reading chair and settled down. He watched as Rhett rummaged around in a different drawer. “So, is this bad?”

“Not bad, per se,” Rhett answered. “More inconvenient than anything else.” He held up a tool and squinted at it. “I think you just have a very low magical ability.”

Link thought about how much of a struggle it had been for him to master the simplest of spells. “That would explain a lot.”

Rhett came over, holding an item that looked like a brass tuning fork. “Can you do Leibowitz?”

“Yeah. Well.” Link closed his eyes and held his finger and thumb about an inch apart in front of his face, as if he were about to inspect a marble. He tried to center himself and whispered the nonsense syllables that activated the Incandescence. Immediately, his fingertips began to tingle. Link opened his eyes and was relieved to see a spark between his finger and thumb. It was faint and flickering, but at least it was there.

Rhett held the tuning fork up to his face and peered at Link thoughtfully through it, first one eye, then the other. “You can stop,” he said after about thirty seconds. 

Link crushed the little spark between his finger and thumb. The tingling stopped. “So am I a Muggle?”

Rhett’s eyes widened and he barked a laugh. “Ha! Not quite. I’d guess you’re in the bottom five or ten percent in natural magical ability.”

Link, who a week ago never thought about his magical ability or lack thereof, frowned. He’d always been tough on himself, and being on the low end of the bell curve bothered him, even though it was through no fault of his own.

“I’m sorry,” Rhett said, noticing Link’s expression. “Um, there are some practices from Vietnam and Laos that you might have better luck with, if you wanted to try…” He trailed off.

Link shook his head. “I’m okay, but… you said I didn’t have to do any magic to do my job, but that’s obviously not true. I can’t come up here and refill supplies if there’s stuff I can’t see.”

“Yeah…” Rhett stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You don’t have to _do_ magic, but you do have to not fuck up my work.”

“What is that, anyway?” Link looked at the floor with his mirror. The grid didn’t cover the entire floor, but it wasn’t contained to the open space, either. Part of it extended under the long table, and another part trailed up the wall like a climbing vine.

“Do you know what ley lines are?” Rhett asked.

“They’re like… lines of energy that go across the Earth?” Link hazarded. “And the places that they intersect are more powerful. Is that right?”

“Close enough,” Rhett said. “Before the Industrial Revolution, you could do significant magic even if you were nowhere near a ley line, because the general ambient magic level was also higher. These days, they’re much, much weaker. This house is on an intersection, which is why I can have multiple magic doors and a workshop and all that. It’s probably one of the most magical locations in North America.”

Link raised his eyebrows, impressed. It seemed his new employer was much more accomplished than his slovenly appearance suggested. Link waved his mirror at the floorboards. “So what is that stuff, some way of manipulating the energy?”

Rhett grinned at him, apparently pleased that his new assistant was not a complete idiot. “Pretty much. It wouldn’t hurt you if you stepped on it--nothing in this house will hurt you, by the way--but it _would_ screw up a lot of my processes here.”

“Is the rest of the house like this?”

“No, just the workshop. Everything else is finished. Think of it as like…” Rhett looked up at the vaulted ceiling as he thought. “Like the engine in a car, maybe. It’s always in there working away, and you can open the hood and take a look, but for the most part it’s invisible.”

“Huh.” Link didn’t really have anything to say beyond that. He was way out of his depth.

“I’ll have to do the stocking for now, I guess,” Rhett said. “Until I can figure something out.”

“Could you...enchant…” Link had no idea what the right verb was for magicking something. “My glasses like this mirror?”

“Maybe,” Rhett said doubtfully. “Clear glass is pretty different than a mirror.”

Link pulled his glasses off and squinted at them. “You know, I don’t think they’re actually glass.”

Rhett sighed. “Just use the mirror for now. Come over here so I can get you set up so the house will recognize you.”


	5. Chapter 5

Link picked his way across the floor, using the mirror to guide him. It was awkward, but not impossible. He joined Rhett at the long table. There was a shallow brass incense dish with what looked like some dried flowers and leaves in it next to a box of matches, a box of bandaids, and a box of single use disposable lancets. “So what is this?”

“This is old magic,” Rhett said. “Maybe the oldest magic there is. I’ll put a drop of your blood in the dish and burn it with the incense, and then the house will recognize you. The front door will let you in without a key, the hallway door will let you come up to the workshop, and you’ll even be able to open my bedroom door if there’s an emergency.”

“How will I know if there’s an emergency?”

“If you try to open the door and it opens, it’s an emergency.” Rhett opened the box of lancets and handed one to Link, who took it reluctantly. “There’s a few other things, too, but the most important is the intercom.”

“Okay…” Link said, trying to remember if he’d seen any intercom panels. He didn’t think so.

“We each have one, and it follows us around,” Rhett said. “We’ll be able to reach each other any time as long as we’re both in the house. If you need me, just turn around, and it’ll be there.”

Link shook his head in astonishment. “A magic intercom.” 

“Yep.” Rhett pushed the brass dish towards Link, who swallowed hard. He’d never been good with blood. He snapped off the protective tip of the lancet and held it over the pad of his middle finger. His hands shook wildly. Rhett watched impassively.

Link pulled the lancet away. “I can’t,” he said, a little ashamed. “I’m not good with blood.”

“Would it be okay if I did it?” Rhett asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Okay, tell me if you need to sit down or anything.” Rhett took Link’s hand ever so gently. Link closed his eyes and focused on his breathing as Rhett pricked his finger, squeezed it over the brass dish, and bandaged it up. “All done.”

Link opened his eyes. His middle finger was wrapped in a neon pink bandage and there was a dark red droplet on one of the dried flowers in the dish. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Rhett struck a match and lit the incense. The dried plants burned quickly, adding a strange, sharp smell that Link couldn’t identify to the sandalwood incense. They stood and watched the smoke curl up into the eaves. “Congrats. You’re in.”

“Wow.” Link didn’t feel any different, but this seemed far more binding than any of the contracts and nondisclosure agreements he’d signed for any of his previous jobs.

“You have permission to come up here now, but I’d rather you didn’t unless it’s absolutely necessary.” Rhett picked up the mirror and handed it to Link. “You better keep this in the meantime, though.” He began cleaning off the table.

Link watched for a moment. “Is that it?”

Rhett didn’t look up. “Yep. You’re free to go.” Apparently Link was dismissed.

“Oh. Okay.” Link carefully navigated his way back to the staircase and left Rhett alone in his workshop. The gentle way Rhett had taken his hand and the abruptness with which Rhett kicked him out had given Link a bit of whiplash, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

In the meantime, though, he had plenty of work cut out for him. It was time to start making sense of Rhett’s finances.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link spent the next month moving out of Ethan’s apartment and into Rhett’s house. This actually got Ethan’s attention, and he initiated what turned out to be the longest conversation they’d had in their four months of living together.

“You’re his _servant_?” Ethan asked, astonished.

“Personal assistant,” Link corrected.

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, I’m paid by his business, for one,” Link said. “I deal with financial and administrative stuff, not domestic stuff. No cooking, no chores.”

Ethan pondered that for a moment. “So, like a live in secretary?”

“Close enough,” Link said. “Eventually I’ll run his entire business.” That was, if Link managed to last longer than any of the other assistants. So far, Rhett seemed reasonable enough, and Link was completely enchanted with the house. He didn’t see any serious red flags--at least not yet.

Ethan snorted. He belonged to the segment of the population which viewed magic as a hopelessly archaic practice that should stay in the past, and good riddance.

Link was over it. He picked up his laundry and balanced it on his hip as he opened the apartment door. “I'll be back this evening,” he said.

“Yeah, whatever.” Ethan returned to his game, and that was the last conversation they had.

~*~*~*~*~*~**~*

Link learned a little about Rhett, and a little about the house.

Rhett spent most of his time up in the lab, emerging to watch a basketball game or get food. He never asked Link to go grocery shopping for him, which surprised Link at first, but it turned out that Rhett loved to cook. Left to his own devices, Link would live on salad, cereal, pasta, and sandwiches, but Rhett insisted on feeding him.

“Are you sure?” Link asked the first time Rhett offered him some of the bolognese he’d been simmering for the past three hours. It smelled amazing, and he would love to eat it, but Link didn’t quite feel okay accepting. “I mean, I have my own food.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Rhett said. “You can have some of whatever I make. Think of it as a perk, if you want.”

“Okay.” After that, Link ate Rhett’s cooking a few times a week. He didn’t eat with Rhett, though, because the magician took his meals up to the lab, which disappointed Link a little. He wanted to get to know his new employer/housemate better.

Rhett had a lot of robes. He had a few silky dressing gowns and a few kimonos (there was an indigo blue one that Link particularly liked), but once in a while he’d emerge from the hallway door in something remarkable.

“Princeton, right?” Link asked one morning, gesturing towards Rhett’s orange and black academic gown as he passed by the office door.

Rhett looked down at himself. “What?”

“Black and orange are Princeton’s colors,” Link said. “I thought maybe you went to Princeton.”

“Oh. Nope.” Rhett vanished down the stairs on his way to the kitchen. Link sighed.

A few days later, though, he looked up as Rhett walked past and shrieked with laughter. Link clapped his hands over his mouth to stifle his giggles. “Oh my god, Rhett, I’m so sorry, but you look like Cary Grant in _Bringing Up Baby_. Those feathers!”

Rhett looked at the sleeve of his robe, which was peach chiffon with marabou trim around the cuffs, collar, and hem. “Too much, do you think?” he asked, with a hint of a smile.

“I have no idea,” Link admitted. “I guess it depends on what the occasion is.”

“The occasion,” Rhett declared, “is breakfast.”

Link glanced at the clock in the corner of his computer screen. It was almost 2pm. Rhett seemingly had no regard for a regular sleep schedule, or schedules in general. “Yeah, that’s probably appropriate.”

Rhett nodded in satisfaction and vanished down the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The robe scene in Bringing Up Baby (which is fantastic) is also the first instance of the word "gay" being used in the modern sense in a movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Tu7ybU54g


	6. Chapter 6

Rhett’s finances were not as screwed up as Link had feared, mostly because Rhett actually kept his personal and business expenses separate. This immediately rocketed him to the top of Link’s favorite employers list. Bernadette had never fully grasped the need to keep things separate (or possibly didn’t care, because Link would always fix it). When she told Link that she was going to take a vow of poverty on her way to becoming a nun, she joked that it would dramatically simplify things for her. Link didn’t know about _that_ , but either way, he wasn’t in charge of her accounts anymore.

A few days after Link’s lease at Ethan’s place officially ended, he caught Rhett on his way up from the kitchen. “Hey, have you done your taxes yet?”

Rhett took a bite of the sandwich he was holding and gave Link a look of _Do I_ look _like a guy who has done his taxes_?

“Okay, I can do them. I’m gonna have to file an extension, though.” Link made a note on his notepad.

“You do whatever you gotta do, man,” Rhett said once he swallowed. “Did you ever find out if that David Simmons guy actually paid?”

David Simmons had purchased a set of the crystals that glowed and orbited the owner's head like electrons around an atom over three months ago. He swore he’d sent payment. Rhett swore he hadn’t. Figuring out who was right was one of Link’s first tasks.

“Nope. I went all the way back to before he put in his order. I actually sent him an email yesterday saying to send me proof the money left his bank or his account was in danger of going to collections.”

“You can do that?” Rhett mumbled through a mouthful of ham and salami.

Link shrugged. “I’d have to run it past your lawyer first and the collections agency would take a cut, but yeah, if you want.” Link had been learning a lot over the past month, including the fact that there were lawyers who specialized in magical affairs. It seemed perfectly logical as soon as he found out. Magic was just completely uncharted territory to him.

“How much does he owe?”

“Uh…” Link sifted through the papers on the desk until he found the invoice. “$8,143.82.” A single head orbiting crystal was $2,500, which floored Link, and the minimum order was three. Rhett really _did_ make a lot of money on useless rich person toys.

“Send him,” Rhett said. He had mayonnaise in his mustache and was wearing joggers that were far too short for him and a flannel robe patterned with little Labrador retrievers. He did not look like a guy who made anywhere between $5,000 to $20,000 a month. He did, however, look like a guy who hadn’t done his taxes.

“You got it,” Link said cheerfully. Now that he had a pretty good grip on the financial side of things, he could start on what he really enjoyed: turning a business into a well oiled machine. The more business responsibilities he took over, the more time Rhett would have to work bigger, more interesting projects, like the doors.

Rhett considered him for a moment. “You’re a lot better at this than the others.”

“I _did_ go to school for it…”

“Really?” Rhett took the last bite of his sandwich.

“Yeah,” Link said. “I mean, it’s on my resume.”

Rhett made a dismissive gesture with his plate. “Why would I read your resume?” he asked. “That’s what I paid the agency for.”

“Ah.” It was suddenly clear why Rhett had trouble with his assistants.

“I gotta go. Let me know what David Simmons says.” Rhett suddenly realized his plate was empty. He set it down on Link’s papers. “Can you take care of that? Thanks.” He left before Link could answer.

“Sure,” Link said to his retreating back. He made a face at the plate. Maybe there was more than one reason why Rhett went through so many assistants.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Even though Rhett said the side view mirror wouldn’t show any of the ley lines in the finished magical items, Link inspected the entire house with it. There were things that he knew for a fact were magical (the front door, the hallway door, and the stained glass window at the end of the hall, which turned out to show the ocean at different times of the day and in different weather) and things that he merely _suspected_ were magical.

One was the quartz orb on the newel post. It was the size of a grapefruit. Link wouldn’t quite call it a crystal ball, because it was full of milky inclusions, but it was close enough that it had to do _something_.

He also suspected the door to the butler’s pantry, because it had a glass knob and the only other glass knobs in the house were on the upstairs hallway door. The living room fireplace, with its green tile hearth and surround, was another possibility, although Link couldn’t articulate why.

The side view mirror, of course, didn’t show anything.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

While he was exploring the house, Link also discovered that it was filthy. At first, he’d been so overwhelmed by its magic features and domestic beauty to notice, but now he was aghast.

Link searched for cleaning supplies in the bathroom, under the kitchen sink, and in the pantry, but didn’t find much. He needed to go to the store. Rhett had given him a card for the business account and a card for his personal account, so it was time to spend some money.

He turned around. The intercom was there, set into the side of a kitchen cabinet. It looked horribly out of place in the house, with its 80s wood and chrome aesthetic, but Link had to admit it was useful.

He pushed the button. “Rhett, I gotta go to Target. You want anything?” 

Rhett answered a few moments later. “Yeah, can you get me some of that cucumber flavored water? And some jerky.”

“What kind of jerky?” There was no answer. Link tried again. “Hello?” 

No answer. Link rolled his eyes. “Guess you’re getting whatever’s on sale,” he muttered to himself. “ _Magicians_.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~

Link went through the self checkout at Target, because he didn’t want to have to subject some poor cashier to his three different transactions: house supplies on the business card, Rhett’s snacks on Rhett’s card, and a t-shirt with a stylized desert scene on it for himself.

A lot of the magic features in the house were more for show than anything else, but a front door that unlocked and opened itself when you approached with your arms full of shopping was pretty fantastic, Link had to admit.

An hour later, everything was put away in its right place. Link was busy sweeping cobwebs off the crown molding in the dining room, which required him to stand on a chair because the ceiling was so high. He was so intent on his work that he didn’t notice Rhett’s arrival.

“You know you don’t have to do that, right?” Rhett said.

Link jumped and nearly lost his balance. He braced himself on the wall and turned around to glare at Rhett. “Well, it needed it.”

Rhett stared at him for a moment, gave Link a _suit yourself_ kind of shrug, and sauntered into the kitchen. When he emerged a few minutes later with a bag of Target brand jerky and a bottle of his disgusting cucumber water, Link asked, “Can’t you make a dusting spell?”

“Nope.” Rhett stuck a piece of jerky in his mouth.

“Why not?”

“Only things anchored in objects work now,” Rhett said. “Autonomous process spells quit working sometime in the 1820’s.”

“Huh.” Link lowered his mop, irritation giving way to curiosity. “Why is magic so much weaker now? I know it had something to do with the Industrial Revolution, but that’s it.”

“Pollution, destruction of natural environments, climate change, take your pick. It’s a pretty well established fact that the more untouched a place is, the more ley lines and ambient magic it has, but even if we switched to 100% green energy tomorrow, we’re not going to have enough ambient magic for autonomous process spells ever again. The Earth is just too damaged.” Rhett took another bite of jerky and chewed thoughtfully. “This isn’t very good.”

“Tell me what kind you want next time, then,” Link said absently. There was something very poignant about Rhett devoting his life to magic, which would never be stronger than it was now, and might be completely gone within their lifetime.

“I usually get Duke’s.” With that, Rhett headed back to the staircase. Link watched him go and shook his head. He couldn’t figure Rhett out, and he was pretty sure Rhett hadn’t figured Rhett out, either. 

Link turned back to his cobwebs. Those, at least, were straightforward.


	7. Chapter 7

Link had been in Rhett’s employ for a month and a half before the intercom became an issue.

It was a useful little gadget, especially once Link figured out that the hallway setup blocked the noise from Rhett’s workroom from reaching his bedroom, but knowing that it was potentially lurking behind him at all times kind of gave him the creeps.

If he could see it manifest, it might not be so bad, but the intercom only appeared outside his field of vision. Link would just turn around to find it embedded in whatever part of the house was closest to him--a wall, a cabinet, the floor, the shower surround.

It was the shower surround that sparked their first major confrontation. It was a _very_ nice shower and Link tended to spend more time in it than was strictly necessary. The bathroom had great acoustics, too, and knowing the hallway door blocked Rhett from hearing him gave Link the freedom to sing whatever he wanted.

“ _Seeeee, see the boys as they walk on by,_ ” Link sang as he rinsed his hair. “ _It’s enough to make a young ma--_ ” He was cut off by the squawk of the intercom.

“Hey, Link, you busy?”

Link yelped in surprise and whipped his head around. The intercom was there, incongruously sprouting from the white tiles with water cascading over it.

“Link? You there?”

Link reached out to jab the button, but hesitated. He knew there was no electricity involved, but it just felt _wrong_ to use what looked like an electrical device in the shower. He made a face and hit the button anyway. “Kinda busy, Rhett!”

“What? Did you say something?”

Link growled and shoved the showerhead over so the water no longer hit the intercom. “I am _busy_ , Rhett!”

“Okay. What’s that noise?”

“The shower!” Link yanked the showerhead back in position and turned his back on the intercom. Rhett said something else, but Link pointedly did not listen.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

A while later, when Link was fully dressed, he went out though his hallway door and immediately turned to enter Rhett’s hallway, which was stupid enough that it made him even more irritated. He stomped up the stairs to the workroom, but stopped on the final step. No matter how mad he was, Link would never purposely ruin anything of Rhett’s. “Rhett!”

Rhett was sitting on a stool at the long table, working on something small that Link couldn’t make out. “Yeah?” he said without looking up.

“Rhett, look at me.” This time, Rhett did look up, and Link stared him dead in the face. “I want you to stop the intercom from showing up in the bathroom.”

Rhett blinked at him. “What if I need you?”

“You’re gonna have to wait!” Link exclaimed in exasperation. “Look, I’m willing to get up in the middle of the night once in a while if you really need help, but I have to draw the line _somewhere_ , and that line is going to be the bathroom door.” He emphasized his point with a slicing motion.

“That’s going to be a pain in the ass, though,” Rhett said.

“I honestly don’t care,” Link replied. He had a headache. “Either the intercom stays out of the bathroom-- _all_ the bathrooms, not just mine--or I will completely ignore it and we’ll have to use cellphones like normal people.”

Rhett stared at him with an expression of mild surprise. “You’re serious about this.”

“Yes, I’m serious about this!” Link shrieked. “And there’s no way I’m the first assistant to feel this way.”

Rhett had the grace to look slightly abashed at that. He opened his mouth to say something, but Link cut him off. He didn’t want to hear it. “I’m going to take a nap. Do _not_ call me.” Link turned around and started down the stairs, leaving Rhett to do whatever it was he did in his lab.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The next day, Link closed the office door behind him when he went to work. He was usually a big believer in an open door policy, but right now he needed some really explicit boundaries. When he was done working, Link went out and explored the neighborhood, ate at a cafe for dinner, and went to his room immediately upon returning home.

Rhett left him alone. Usually, he’d stop in on his way up or down the stairs, to drop off things for Link to mail, to pick up packages that got delivered to him (he got a lot of packages, from all over the world, and eventually admitted to Link that he had “a serious eBay problem”), or just to make small talk. Instead, a little table appeared in the hallway. The two men took turns leaving items on it, which worked surprisingly well.

Link didn’t even see Rhett in passing, which made him wonder, cynically, if there was some kind of magical security camera that tracked his movements. The intercom never made an appearance, either. Link hoped that was because Rhett was fixing it and not just that he was giving Link space (although that was also appreciated).

On the third day, Link was surprised to find that he missed Rhett. The magician was self-centered, oblivious, and a pain in Link’s ass, but he was funny and clever, and endlessly patient with Link’s complete ignorance of magic. He was also a _much_ better housemate than Ethan.

Somehow, Link had become rather fond of Rhett over the past six weeks. He could understand completely why the previous assistants couldn’t deal with Rhett and his house, but Link thought he might be in it for the long haul.

Well, if Rhett managed to find some empathy, that is.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

There was a knock on the door on the morning of the fourth day.

“Yeah?” Link said warily. The ball was in Rhett’s court now. Whatever he had to say would dictate the course of their future relationship.

“I fixed the intercom,” came the muffled reply.

“Thank you.” Link turned his attention back to the computer. The magician would have to do better than that to get back in Link’s good graces, though. Fixing the intercom was the bare minimum.

After a few moments, Link frowned. He was pretty sure Rhett was still lurking outside. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah.” A few more moments passed. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.” Link swiveled his chair around to watch as Rhett slipped through the door and closed it behind him. He waited for Rhett to speak.

Rhett leaned back against the door and stuck his hands in the pockets of his satin robe. “So, the intercom. I should have kept it out of the bathroom to begin with.”

“Yes.”

“And… I’m going to try and be more thoughtful about it, and not wake you up in the middle of the night unless I really need to.”

Link raised his eyebrows. He was almost impressed. “Try?”

Rhett shrugged a little, embarrassed. “I lose track of time. You know how it is.”

“Yeah.” Link actually smiled a bit. It wasn’t an apology, and Rhett barely acknowledged his mistakes, but it was a start. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Rhett said as he opened the door to leave. “Um, do you want me to close this?”

Link shook his head. “Nah.”

“Okay.” Rhett gave him a little smile and left, leaving the door open behind him. 


	8. Chapter 8

Things returned to normal after that, or at least as normal as things got in the pink house. The intercom saw a lot less use. Instead of paging Link if he wasn’t in his office when Rhett had a non-urgent question, Rhett took to writing notes and leaving them in Link’s chair. True, he used whatever piece of paper was handy, no matter if it was a junk mail envelope or an invoice that needed to be paid, but Link was willing to cut him a little slack.

There was one final incident with the intercom, but instead of making Link angry, it actually gave him some hope that maybe Rhett could actually become more considerate.

It started in the same way that Rhett’s intercom conversations always started. “Hey, Link.”

Link opened one eye. He was in bed, still mostly asleep, and his clock read 3:17am. With a groan, he reached over his head and groped blindly along the wall until he felt the angular plastic of the intercom. “What?”

“Can you sing? Like, if I were to play a note, could you harmonize with it?”

Link was too sleepy to be mad. He pushed the intercom button. “Rhett, what time is it?”

There was a long pause, long enough that Link was mostly asleep by the time Rhett replied. “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

Link was already way ahead of him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day, Rhett somehow managed to get out of the house without Link noticing, because the first Link saw of him was Rhett coming up the stairs with a plastic cup and a white paper bag. He came into Link’s office and set them down on the desk with a flourish.

“What’s this?” Link asked. Rhett had obviously been out and about, because he wasn’t wearing a robe. Apparently going out in pink velour pants and an orange floral shirt was fine, but a kimono on top was just too far.

“A blueberry scone and an iced vanilla latte,” Rhett said. “From that place with the big fish tank.”

“I love that place.” Link had been pleased to find a nice coffee shop only a few blocks away, and delighted to discover that it had a massive aquarium with a few fat little goldfish happily bobbing around inside. “The guy at the counter said it used to be a Chinese place and they just kept the tank.”

“Why do Chinese restaurants have aquariums, anyway?” Rhett asked. “Seems weird.”

“It’s a feng shui thing, I think.” Link took a sip of the latte. It was delicious. “This is my favorite.”

“I know.” Rhett shifted his weight and leaned casually against the door frame. “I’m gonna put a clock in the intercom.”

Link raised his eyebrows as he took another sip. “Won’t that be a pain in the ass?” he asked once he swallowed.

“Yeah.”

“Is this an apology for last night?” Link raised his latte.

“Yeah.”

“Wow.” Link was actually impressed. “There might be hope for you yet.”

Rhett laughed and shook his head before heading back to his workshop. “Don’t hold your breath!” he yelled as he went through the hallway door.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Over time, Link began to feel more at home in the house. Part of it was having his belongings scattered throughout the house--his shoes by the door, his jacket on the coat rack, his snacks in the pantry, his stapler on the desk--and part of it was that Rhett genuinely seemed to enjoy having Link around.

It wasn’t just that he appreciated having Link run his errands and take care of the house, either. Most of the time, Rhett cooked for himself and Link was welcome to have some if he wanted, but once in a while, Rhett would make something specifically for Link. If Link was watching something in the living room, sometimes Rhett would sit on the other end of the couch and watch with him for a while.

When Link lived with Bernadette, she made it very clear that while she adored him, Link was absolutely her subordinate. She was also very particular about how things should be done, and expected Link to anticipate her needs. He had a schedule, a dress code, a code of conduct.

Rhett was Bernadette’s opposite in every way. He did not give a fuck what Link wore, how he answered emails, or when he worked, as long as Link got everything done. At first, his lackadaisical attitude had thrown Link off, but once he figured out that Rhett wasn’t looking for a subordinate, everything got a lot easier.

In fact, Rhett seemed to want a business partner more than anything else. He asked Link for advice on how he should handle business disputes, and completely deferred to Link on financial matters. It was a new dynamic for Link, and he liked it very much.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link knew there was nothing that he wanted to eat in the fridge, but he opened the door and stared into its innards anyway. It was one of those days.

“Hey, Link.” Rhett’s voice came from behind the open fridge door. “What are you doing?”

Link closed the door to see that the intercom had appeared on the wall next to the fridge. He pushed the button to reply. “Nothing, really.”

“Come up to the lab. I have something for you.”

“Okay. Give me a couple minutes.” Link let go of the intercom button and opened the fridge again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

One string cheese later, Link went up to the workroom. He stopped at the top stair, as usual. Rhett was bent over his workbench, as usual. “Hey, Rhett.”

Rhett looked up with a grin. “Hey! I made something for you.” He picked something off the counter and brought it over to Link. “Check it out.”

Link took the offered object. It was a pair of glasses with silver wire frames. “So I can see the lines?”

“A prototype,” Rhett said. “They’re just cheap readers, but if this works, I can put it on your actual glasses.”

Link took off his actual glasses and hung them from the neck of his t-shirt. He put on the silver framed readers. “Oh!”

“Do they work?” Rhett asked eagerly.

“Um, kind of?” Link squinted through the glasses. He could tell that there was _something_ marked on the floor, but it was warped and shimmery. “It’s all smeared.”

“Well, yeah, the prescription’s all wrong,” Rhett said. “Of course it’s gonna be blurry.”

“No, it’s more like…” Link tilted his head and tried to think of a better description for what he saw. “Like it’s underwater, maybe? Ripply.” He took the glasses off and held them out to Rhett.

“Well, shit.” Rhett took the glasses back with a scowl. “I’m not surprised, though. That’s a glass spell and the lenses are polycarbonate.”

“Do I really need it?” Link asked. “I mean, we’ve been getting along fine without me coming up here.”

“There’s a difference between not coming up here by choice and not coming up here because you _can’t_ ,” Rhett said. “And I think you should be able to come up here if you need to. Or want to,” he added.

Link nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“I’ll let you know if I figure anything else out.” Rhett dropped the silver glasses on the counter in disgust and went back to where he’d been working before Link had arrived.

Link recognized this as his cue to leave. “Well, thanks for trying,” he said as he turned to go down the stairs. Rhett acknowledged him with a grunt, which was more than Link usually got.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link never really got the hang of Rhett’s fancy cappuccino machine, even after nearly three months. Instead, he’d just make himself a cup of pour over coffee using hot water from the cappuccino machine. It was a nice little mid-morning ritual that Link had really come to enjoy.

He took his cup of coffee upstairs and found an envelope in his chair. Rhett must have been looking for him. Link picked up the envelope and saw that it was from Rhett’s lawyer--probably something about revising the disclaimers that came with Rhett’s rich person toys. Link sighed and flipped it over. There was a note from Rhett, written in pink highlighter.

_Expecting a guest at 10. Please get the door._

Link checked the clock. It was only a quarter past nine, so he sat down, opened the envelope, and got to work. He was so intent that by the time the doorbell rang forty five minutes later, he’d completely forgotten about Rhett’s guest.

“Oh, right.” Link pushed back his chair and clattered down the stairs. He was reaching for the doorknob when the bell rang again. Link stopped, fingertips barely touching the brass knob. The doorbell on the front door (which currently depicted hollyhocks) was the old fashioned mechanical kind, which made a grinding, whirring sort of ring. The doorbell he just heard was the modern _ding dong_ ring.

“Uh…” Link opened the front door anyway, but no one was there. He turned around, intending to call Rhett on the intercom, but he heard a knocking coming from the back of the house. 

Link went through the dining room and into the kitchen. He could hear the knocking clearly now. It was coming from the pantry door.

“I _knew_ it,” Link whispered to himself. He turned the clear glass knob, half excited and half afraid of what he might find.

When he opened the door, Link’s mouth dropped open. Instead of boxes of pasta and cans of beans, there was a woman with what looked like a very nice home office behind her. She was very tall, probably taller than Link even in stocking feet, but in her heels, she’d give Rhett a run for his money. Her hair was cut into thick, blunt bangs, she wore a severe navy dress, carried an attache case, and generally looked like she could eat a man alive.

She also looked mildly surprised to see Link. “ _Another_ assistant?” she asked. “Or has Rhett finally pulled his head out of his ass and found a boyfriend?”

 _What_? Link gaped at her for a moment longer and then tried to rally. “Um, not to my knowledge,” he said, standing aside so she could come into the kitchen. “I’m the assistant.”

“How long have you been here?” the woman asked, her heels clicking over the checkered tile floor. She obviously knew where she was going.

Link trailed behind her. “Almost three months.”

The woman paused at the base of the stairs and gave him a thoughtful look. “Really? That might be a record.” She turned and started up the stairs, leaving Link wondering if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

The woman was able to enter Rhett’s hallway without issue, so Link tried to go back to his work. He wasn’t very successful. Who was that woman? Another magician? She had access to at least two magic doors, so that seemed likely. How did she know Rhett? What were they doing up there?

Link got a couple answers a few hours later when Rhett paged him on the intercom and asked him to bring up some cucumber water and the Chinese menu that was on the fridge door. When Link got up to the attic and stopped at the top stair, Rhett introduced the woman as Flo (“Flora Vanessa Martinez,” she clarified to Link over Rhett’s shoulder), the “door wizard”, by which he meant that she was literally a wizard who specialized in magic doors.

“So are you gonna do more doors?” Link asked as he made a note of their Chinese orders in his note app.

“Maybe!” Rhett said. “That’s what we’re talking about.” He turned his back on Link and started talking to Flora again, who met Link’s eyes and raised her eyebrows in a shrug. _You know how he is_ , it seemed to say. _He doesn’t mean anything by it_.

She stayed until long past Link’s unofficial quitting time of 4:30pm. He was in the kitchen making himself a grilled cheese when Flora reappeared, heels clicking on the parquet floors.

“Rhett seems to think pretty highly of you,” she said.

Something about her tone of voice made Link suspicious. “Is… that good?” he asked, spatula in hand.

“Well, I suppose that depends on what you think of him,” Flora said. 

“Hmm.” Link leaned against the counter and thought. “He’s really self centered, which is annoying but it also means he’s not a micromanager, so he mostly just leaves me alone. And he’s a pretty good housemate, so I like him fine, I guess.” 

That made Flora laugh for some reason. She then pointed at the stove and said, “I think your sandwich is burning.” Link turned to look and swore, because she was right. By the time he removed his smoking sandwich from the heat and turned off the burner, she was gone, vanished through the magic door.

Link set the pan down on one of the cool burners and opened the pantry door. Just as he suspected, it was now full of boxes of pasta and cans of beans.


	9. Chapter 9

“ _Now_ what have you done?” Link asked as Rhett put an iced latte and a pastry bag on his desk. This had become Rhett’s standard apology ritual after doing things like writing on Link’s important papers, paging him in the middle of the night, or eating the last of Link’s cereal.

“Nothing.” Link gave him a skeptical look. “Nothing, I swear! It’s because you’ve been here three months and passed your 90 day probationary period.”

“There’s no 90 day probationary period,” Link scoffed as he opened the pastry bag. It contained a chocolate croissant. “Ooh, nice.”

“Well, you’ve been here longer than any of the other ones and you seem to know what you’re doing and you’re not _that_ annoying, so…” Rhett shrugged. “I think I’ll keep you.”

Link grabbed a piece of scrap paper and balled it up. “Get out of my office,” he said, laughing, and threw it at Rhett, who dodged it easily and ran off through the hallway door. Link picked up the croissant and took a bite.

He thought he’d keep Rhett, too.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Weeks passed. Flora came over once a week, then twice a week. Rhett told Link that she was one of the most skilled and accomplished wizards in the world.

“So wizardry is a specific kind of magical practice, right?” Link asked. He was sitting on the counter of the kitchen peninsula, which he knew annoyed Rhett, but Rhett hadn’t told him to move yet.

“Yeah. Um, this is a really terrible analogy, but it’s sort of the STEM side of magic. Very precise, lots of math.” Rhett swept a pile of pepper slices into the pan, where they joined a big pile of sauteed onions. “Flo’s specialty is making things that are _really_ energy efficient. She’s made doors that work even though they aren’t on a ley line intersection.”

Link looked over at the pantry door. “How many magic doors are there in the world?”

“Six hundred? Maybe six fifty.” Rhett poked at his vegetables. “Can you get me the sherry?”

This was his way of telling Link to get off the counter, but Link hopped right back up after delivering the sherry. “Six hundred doors and you have _three_ of them?” he asked in astonishment.

“The front door isn’t magic,” Rhett said. “It’s a regular door with a magic window and a magic lock.”

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“That one--” Rhett jerked his head towards the pantry. “That’s the traditional kind, one door that goes to two different places, but the door upstairs goes to one place in two different ways. I thought it was kind of a dumb party trick when I made it, but Flo thinks the principal could be expanded into something more useful.”

Link wanted to make sure he understood. “You invented the upstairs door?” 

“Yep.”

“Wow.” Link considered that for a moment. “So, if I’m in the bottom five percent of magical ability, where are you? Like, ninety?”

Rhett threw back his head and laughed. “I wish! Flo’s probably ninety. I’m more like eighty percent. A B- magician.”

“So are you going to get paid for this?” Link asked.

“Eventually.” Rhett added a pile of steak strips to the pan. “Flo’s covering the initial operating costs.”

“Mm.” Rhett had enough money that he could live off it for quite a while, but Link was a little annoyed that no one had consulted him about this new business venture. “That’s the kind of thing you really need to tell me about beforehand, since, y’know, I’m in charge of your finances!”

Rhett turned and looked at Link with his eyebrows raised. “If you’re in charge of my finances, you should know that I have plenty saved up. Your job is to keep track of everything, not dictate my income or how I earn it.” He frowned. “And get off the counter.”

Link stared at him. He felt like Rhett had just slapped him. Rhett was right, of course, but he so rarely made reference to being Link’s employer, and never so harshly. 

He slid off the counter, leaving Rhett and his Philly cheesesteak behind, and went upstairs to his room, passing through the magic door on the way.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Things remained tense between the two men. They only spoke when absolutely necessary. Link kept his office door closed and Rhett didn’t offer him dinner. There was no iced latte apology, either.

Link decided he needed a break. He didn’t ask Rhett, he just made plans to visit his cousin and her family.

“I’m going out of town Thursday and I’ll be back Tuesday,” he said to Rhett when the taller man came down to sign some checks. “If that’s alright.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Rhett replied as he scrawled his name. “You just do whatever you want anyway.”

Link didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer. He just waited for Rhett to finish, thanked him, and watched impassively as Rhett left, slamming the office door behind him.

“Dick,” he whispered.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link came back from his weekend at the beach slightly sunburned and much more relaxed than he’d been before leaving. Rhett was nowhere to be seen as Link unpacked and did his laundry, but Link knew he was in the house somewhere. The house just felt different when it was empty.

There was a pile of mail on Link’s desk. He sorted through it, flipping the junk mail off to the side. One of the envelopes was from the collections agency that Link had engaged to follow up with David Simmons, Rhett’s non paying customer. Link opened it and found a check for the full amount, minus the collection agency’s cut.

“Gotcha!” Link whispered to himself in satisfaction. He turned around, looking for the intercom so he could share the news with Rhett, but stopped himself before hitting the button. 

Link sighed. He liked Rhett, he really did, and he knew Rhett liked him, too. He also knew that Rhett was thoughtless and selfish and had issues with boundaries. Was he Rhett’s employee? His unofficial business partner? His roommate? His friend? Whatever Rhett needed or wanted him to be? It was confusing and irritating.

It was so much easier to know where he stood with Bernadette (slightly behind her, with tablet in hand).

The intercom had a little digital clock in it now, set into the speaker grate. It matched the cassette futurism aesthetic of the intercom well, although the LEDs were a shade of coral pink that no mundane LED could match.

Rhett put the clock there, of his own accord, and he did it for Link. Link stared at it for a moment. It had been nearly two weeks since their spat in the kitchen. Link wasn’t angry anymore, not really. He was just… tired. Tired of avoiding Rhett and tired of spending time alone.

Link leaned forward and pressed the button. “Hey Rhett, I’m back.”


	10. Chapter 10

Neither man apologized, mostly because neither thought they were wrong. After a few awkward interactions, they settled back into their roommate/friend/business relationship. Link was still a little apprehensive about where he stood with Rhett, but the one time he tried to raise the subject with Rhett, Rhett just gave him a shrug and said, “I dunno, man. You just do what needs to be done,” before leaving the office in a swirl of green paisley silk.

One of the things that needed to be done was collecting Rhett’s packages. There were a lot of them. Most were supplies that Link ordered for the workroom, but Rhett also bought and sold a _lot_ of stuff online. Link took care of mailing those out, too.

eBay was Rhett’s particular vice. Link never asked what he bought, although he was curious. It was just one of those things that his mother had drilled into him growing up: never ask what’s in someone’s mail. It could be private. 

Sometimes the packages would have customs labels that gave him a clue ( _antique necklace, wooden dominoes_ ), though, and sometimes Rhett would actually show Link his purchases.

“What do you think?” Rhett asked as he spread his arms so Link could admire his new robe. It was red with a pointed hood, swallowtail sleeves, and gold trim.

“You look like you escaped from the Renaissance Festival,” Link said. Apparently, this was the right thing to say, because Rhett beamed at him. Link shook his head. “You and your robes.”

“You can borrow one, if you want,” Rhett offered airily.

Link raised an eyebrow. He was pretty sure what Rhett actually meant was _Let me give you a robe._ “Which one?”

“Whichever one you like.” Rhett frowned. “Well, not the one with feathers. Or the star robe.”

“The indigo kimono,” Link said. Rhett nodded solemnly, as if Link had made a momentous and wise decision, and went to fetch the kimono. Link suspected that Rhett’s bedroom had a massive walk-in closet, a massive bathroom, or both, because the first floor and the attic both seemed to have more square footage than the second floor.

“Here it is!” Rhett insisted that Link get up so he could help Link put it on. “Looks good,” Rhett said as Link smoothed the fabric down his front. “Brings out your eyes.”

“Oh, um, thanks.” Link could tell that he was starting to turn red.

Rhett gave the stupidly charming double finger guns. “Hey, Flo’s gonna come over later.”

“Gotcha.” Link liked Flora, even though she always smiled at him like she knew something he didn’t.

“Cool. I gotta go back to work.” Rhett swept out of the room. Link was pretty sure he only did that so his robe would billow around him dramatically.

Link wrapped the kimono around himself and sat down. It smelled like the sandalwood incense that Rhett burned in the workroom. 

_This is what it would smell like,_ Link thought, _if Rhett hugged me_.

It was a strange and sudden thought. It made Link uncomfortable, but instead of trying to figure out why, he shoved it to the back of his mind and got back to work.

He kept the kimono on, though.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Flora burst out laughing when Link opened the pantry door. “What on _earth_ are you wearing?”

Link looked down at himself. Jeans, t-shirt with a dog on it, argyle socks, and the indigo kimono. “It was Rhett’s idea.”

“You can tell him no, you know,” Flora said as she went to the stairs.

Link followed her, touching the quartz orb as he passed it. “I know.” He went into his office as Flora went to the hallway door, heels silent on the blue carpet runner.

She stopped as she reached for the milk glass knob. “Oh, I almost forgot! I have something for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah.” Flora reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out a little tube.

Link took it. The tube was black with a clear cover. He took off the cover and gave the base a twist, revealing a waxy cylinder. “Black lipstick?”

“No, it’s eye black. Like baseball players wear.” Flora drew a finger across her prominent cheekbone. “It should let you see the ley lines in the lab.”

A little thrill of excitement rippled through Link. “Can I try it?”

“Knock yourself out,” Flora said, leaving the office. “See you upstairs.”

Link waited until the hallway door closed behind her before opening it with the blue knob. He took the eye black into the bathroom and inspected it under the light. It looked exactly like black lipstick, although it had a faint smokey smell that was not unpleasant. Link got out his phone and did a little research on how to apply eye black, which turned into looking at pictures of Bryce Harper in his Ultimate Warrior style eye black, which turned into reading an op-ed about whether or not athletes should be allowed to wear eye black stickers with messages on them.

“Oh, right.” Link put down the phone and took his glasses off. Flora hadn’t said anything about how much he should apply, so Link went with a relatively light swipe. No need to start out like Bryce Harper. Link put his glasses back on and checked himself out in the mirror. The combination of glasses and eye black looked so absurd it made him laugh.

He went out through the hallway door and immediately reentered it, a maneuver that never failed to exasperate him. Link could hear Rhett and Flora talking as he mounted the stairs.

“I just think you’re being overly cavalier about this,” Flora said, sounding concerned.

“Oh my god, Flo, you know as well as I do that she’s all bark no bite. I mean, what’s she gonna do? Sue me?” Rhett laughed. “I’d win easily.”

“I don’t know, it seems different this ti--” Flora was cut off by Link’s shout as he came up the stairs.

“Holy _shit_!” The gridwork on the floor was perfectly clear and had a richness that wasn’t shown in the side view mirror. The lines had a soft, plush look to them, almost like velvet ribbon. “Is this what you always see?”

The other two glanced at each other. Rhett shrugged, so Flora answered. “Not exactly, but it’s probably pretty close.”

Link was still on the stairs. He leaned over to inspect one of the ley lines more closely. “Can I touch this?”

“Um, let me look.” Rhett crossed the open floor, avoiding the lines, and leaned over to inspect the one in front of Link. “Yeah, that’s fine. Don’t touch the intersections, though.”

“Okay.” Link gently touched the ley line with the pad of his finger, the same way he used to pet woolly bear caterpillars when he was a child. The ley line made his finger tingle in a familiar way. “It feels like when I do Leibowitz.”

“Oh, right, I wanted to see you do that,” Flora said. She turned to Rhett. “Where’s your Ivanov resonator?”

That turned out to be the tuning fork instrument. First Flora watched Link, then he watched her and Rhett perform Leibowitz’s Incandescence. To the naked eye, their sparks were steady and brilliant like a tiny sun, but through the forks of the resonator, Link could see the air around their hands rippling and shimmering.

He spent the next hour up in the lab looking at Rhett’s projects and asking a million questions. Eventually, Rhett and Flora kicked him out because they needed to work, so Link took the Ivanov resonator and explored the house. Just as when he used the side view mirror, there weren’t any ley lines to be seen, but the resonator revealed a bit more.

The most powerful objects were the two magic doors, but the rippling patterns around them were very different. Link supposed that made sense, since they both worked in different ways. The stained glass window in the upstairs hallway and the front door panel (currently showing a waving kelp forest) had the same pattern of ripples, but the front door was much stronger. 

There were things with faint auras, too. The magic locks on the front door and Rhett’s bedroom door, the milk steamer on the cappuccino machine, the quartz sphere, and a splatter on the stairway carpet (later, when Link asked about this, Rhett just mumbled something about trying to carry too much at once).

The most interesting ripples belonged to the intercom. It looked like two separate patterns laid on top of each other. Link spent quite a while inspecting them, and finally concluded that one pattern belonged to the intercom itself, and the other belonged to the clock.

Link ended up sitting at his desk, where he could see the hallway door. It was familiar to him now, this wooden door with two knobs that he used many times a day, but looking at the waves of power rippling off it reminded him that his home was a place of artistry and magic. He was lucky to live here.

 _His home_. Link put the resonator down thoughtfully. It had been a bit over five months since he’d moved in. When he lived with Bernadette, he had his own space in a little mother-in-law suite, but it wasn’t _really_ his own. Bernadette had rules and standards there, just as she did everywhere else. Link didn’t mind her rules, because they were all easy enough to follow, but it did prevent the place from feeling like home.

His room in Rhett’s house, though, felt more like Link’s own than anywhere else he’d lived in the past ten years. It was full of Rhett’s furniture, Rhett’s decor, Rhett’s art (well, Link had replaced some of Rhett’s art with his own), but it worked for Link.

The rest of the house was welcoming, too. Link had his office, his own spot in the living room (a huge, plush armchair upholstered in pumpkin colored velvet), his shelves in the kitchen for his things. He wasn’t a guest, he wasn’t the help, he was just a resident, and he loved it.

It was almost like the pink house satisfied all of Link’s domestic needs and wants, even the ones he wasn’t aware of.


	11. Chapter 11

“What is this?” Link asked, poking the quartz orb that graced the newel post. “There’s something magical about it. What does it do?”

Rhett reached out and cupped his hands around it. “This is a late nineteenth century magical object from the Australian Gold Rush. Sunlight passing through it would turn red if it fell on rich gold ore.”

“Does it still work?”

“Nope.” Rhett shook his head and let go of the sphere. “It’s one of those objects that stopped working before 1902. I’m always interested in studying those, seeing how they worked, trying to figure out the techniques. I kind of collect them.”

That was news to Link. He peered closely into the crystal. It looked opaque to him, but he supposed magic would allow light to pass through it. “Where do you find them?”

“eBay, mostly. Sometimes other auction sites.”

“So _that’s_ what you spend so much money on,” Link said with satisfaction. Rhett’s PayPal activity had always been a bit of a mystery. It also explained why he got packages from all over the world regularly.

“Yeah. I try to get stuff that has documentation with it, ‘cause there’s a lot of fakes out there.”

“I am not surprised by that at all,” Link said. “Can I see the rest of your collection?”

“Sure,” Rhett answered. “Not right now, though. Flo called and said she needed to bring some stuff over.”

“Cool. You want anything if I go to the grocery store?”

“Uh…” Rhett thought for a moment. “If you get chicken wings, I’ll make them for dinner tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’ll wait for Flora to get here so I can answer the door,” Link said. He took out his phone and added _chicken wings_ to his shopping list.

“Man.” Rhett shook his head. “I don’t know how I got along without you.”

A warm feeling blossomed in Link’s chest and he smiled at Rhett. “Me neither,” he teased. They both burst into laughter, and Link felt even better.

~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*

Someone banged on the front door. Link sighed and went downstairs to answer it.

This was a regular occurrence. Many of Rhett’s packages required a signature upon delivery, and the delivery people didn’t know how to work the mechanical doorbell, so they just pounded on the frame instead.

“How come this door’s different every time I come here, man?” the current guy asked Link as Link signed for the package.

“It’s magic,” Link said as he handed the delivery guy’s scanner and stylus back. The guy gave him a look that said, _you can’t possibly think I’m actually that stupid_ , before heading back to his truck and driving away.

Link inspected the package as he went back upstairs. It was big enough to hold a coffee mug and the return address was in Botswana. The box itself was battered and mummified with packing tape. “Did they kick it all the way here?” Link muttered as he placed it on the little table in the hallway for Rhett to pick up at his convenience.

Later, when Link looked back to see if there’d been any signs that the box contained something that would blow up his comfortable life with Rhett in the pink house, he had to admit that there were none. It was a perfectly normal, everyday package.

~~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~

Link stuck the junk mail envelope he was using for a bookmark in his book (a history of the magical Crown Jewels of Europe that he’d borrowed from Rhett’s reading nook) and turned off his light. The streetlight outside shone through the leafless branches of the tree outside and illuminated his curtains. Link pulled the blankets up to his shoulders and drifted off.

“Link!”

Link’s eyes popped open. He’d been dreaming about hauling ropes of pearls up out of a well and dropping them on the ground to pile damply around his feet. The bedside clock read 12:48am, which was early enough that Rhett might not consider it too late. Maybe if Link didn’t respond, he’d give up. Link rolled over and shut his eyes again.

“Link, could you come up here please? There’s kind of a situation and I could really use a hand. Um…”

 _That_ woke Link up. He’d never heard Rhett sound so distressed. Something must really be wrong. Link felt around on his bedside table for his glasses and the tube of eye black. Grabbing them, he sat up and pushed the intercom button. “Coming, just give me a minute.”

“Link, I don’t _have_ a min--” There was an electronic screech, which made Link flinch. The intercom had never made that sound before. His stomach dropped. Something was wrong.

“Shit.” Link swiped the eye black across each cheekbone and shoved his glasses on. He ran down his hall and out the door and immediately turned around to re-enter Rhett’s hall, a maneuver that annoyed him at the best of times. “Stupid _fucking_ magic door.”

He stopped at the top of the stairs and surveyed the workroom. It was always cluttered, since Rhett was the type of person to fill up every available surface with _stuff_ , but now the stuff was everywhere--on the floor, in the reading nook, even some on the stairs. Books were thrown from the shelves and cabinet doors hung open.

At first, Rhett was nowhere to be seen, but after a few very long seconds, Link spotted his foot sticking out from behind the long table. He picked his way across the floor, trying to avoid both the debris and the ley lines, heart beating furiously at the thought of what he might find.

What he found was Rhett lying on his back on the floor, clutching his right hand to his chest. There was something black and tarry splattered all over him. Link dropped to his knees next to the magician. “Rhett, are you okay? What did you _do_?”

Rhett closed his eyes as if in pain, although Link didn’t know if it was physical or mental anguish. “Something really, really stupid.”

“Oh.” Link was at a loss. Rhett didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, so Link sat back on his heels. “What can I do?”

Rhett pushed himself up with his left hand and inspected his right thumb. “Can you get a wet washcloth so I can clean up? And a bandaid.”

“Uh, sure.” By the time Link came back with the supplies, Rhett managed to wipe most of the black liquid off with his flannel dog robe. He stuffed it in the trash can with a grimace and took the damp washcloth from Link gratefully. “What _is_ that?” Link asked.

“It’s the same stuff I use to paint the ley line grid on the floor,” Rhett said as he wiped his face. “Someone sent me a booby trap.”

Link’s jaw dropped. “ _What_?”

“Yeah…” Rhett sighed. He still had a black smear on his forehead. “Flo was right, god damn it.”

“Give me that washcloth,” Link said. “You missed a spot.”

“Just throw it away when you’re done, that stuff’ll never come out.” Rhett handed over the washcloth and let Link wipe his forehead. “I gotta call Flo.”

“It’s like 3am in San Antonio,” Link said.

“I know.” Rhett looked around the disastrous workroom. “Um, can you help me find my phone?”

Rhett ended up finding his phone under a stack of papers that had fallen over. Link managed, with difficulty, to refrain from saying, “I told you to clean those up!”. He also found an object covered in faded blue leather. It was a little wider and a little fatter than a phone, and it was absolutely covered with the black liquid.

Link pushed it out from under the table with his toe. “Is this the trap?”

“Yeah.” Rhett picked it up and put it on the counter. “It was supposed to be a case for a pocket watch that kept the watch wound so it would never lose time.”

Link crossed his arms. “You need to tell me what’s going on, right this minute.”

“So, you remember how I hired a friend to be my first assistant, and it didn’t work out because she wanted to be business partners?”

“Yeah. You said she blocked you and you never talked to her again.”

“Well, she sent me an email the other day. It seems that she got wind of my project with Flo and didn’t appreciate that I was working with someone else,” Rhett said. “There’s a lot of other stuff, like she claims she was the one who came up with the technique I used on the hallway door, but that’s what it boils down to.”

A little light came on for Link. “Oh, is this person you told Flora was all bark and no bite?”

“Aimee Bradley, the one and only.” Rhett looked down at his shirt, which was splattered with black drips, and picked up his phone. “Will you let Flo in while I go get cleaned up?”

“Yeah, of course.” Link chewed his thumbnail as he followed Rhett down the attic stairs. He had a horrible feeling that everything was about to get a lot more complicated.


	12. Chapter 12

Link was making tea when he heard a knock from inside the pantry. “Hey,” he said as he opened it.

“Hey,” Flora said. Link had half expected her to be in heels and a blazer with her usual full face of makeup, but instead her face was bare, her hair was up in a messy bun, and she had on moccasins, leggings, and a Princeton sweatshirt. She looked like a completely different person.

“Did you give Rhett that Princeton robe?” Link asked. He held up the box of green tea. Flora nodded, so he pulled out a mug for her, too.

“Yeah, I figured he’d get more use out of it than I would,” she said. “Um... how is he?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.” Link plunked the mug down onto the counter a little too forcefully. “I don’t know who this person is, I don’t know _what_ she did, I don’t know how bad it is…” He trailed off helplessly.

“Ah.” Flora gently took the mug. “So Rhett and Aimee went to college together, but I don’t think they got close until they both happened to move out here around the same time. I met them a few years ago at a networking event for magical professionals.”

Link wrapped his hands around his mug. “I can’t imagine Rhett at a professional event.”

Flora laughed. “He can clean up pretty nice when he wants to. Anyway, I never really liked Aimee. She was… if I said that Rhett was the giver and she was the taker, would you know what I meant?”

“Um, I think so.”

“It used to make me so mad to watch the way she treated him, and he just couldn’t see it. When he hired her as his assistant, I _knew_ it was going to blow up. And then she fucked off and I was like, good riddance, but now there’s _this_ shit.” She looked at something behind Link and raised a hand in greeting. “Hey, Rhett.”

Link turned around. Rhett stood in the kitchen doorway with his hair flopping damply onto his forehead. He was wrapped in an actual bathrobe, something Link had never seen before. “Thanks,” he said quietly as Link handed him a cup of tea.

“Let’s go sit down, shall we?” Flora said. “See if we can figure out what’s going on.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link folded himself into his favorite armchair and watched as Flora inspected the watch box.

“Don’t push the button,” Rhett warned. “It’ll stab you.”

“I know.” Flora laid the case flat on her palm and held it up to her face. “Where, exactly, did you get this?”

“One of those auction websites. Not eBay.”

“Have you bought anything else from there?”

“Uh, I dunno,” Rhett said. “Does it matter?”

“Maybe.” Flora flipped the case over and ran her finger across the underside. “Hang on a second.” She went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and came back with a baby carrot, which she used to push the button. The box popped open. “Voila!”

“That was really clever,” Link said.

“Thank you.” Flora tossed the carrot onto the table and peered into the case. “So Rhett, you pushed the button and it stabbed you. Then what?”

“I could tell something bad was going to happen when it opened, so I didn’t take my thumb off the button. That’s when I called Link on the intercom--”

Link cut in. “What were you gonna have me do? Like, how could I possibly be helpful?”

Rhett shrugged. “You could have held it closed? It doesn’t matter, because it exploded faster than you could have gotten there anyway. Fixative everywhere.”

“That’s the black stuff?” Link asked. “I didn’t know it had a name.”

“Yeah. It got in my mouth and everything. Disgusting.”

Flora put the open watch box on the coffee table. “It honestly seems like she was trying to curse you.”

“ _Curse_ him?” Link said in dismay. “That’s really something that can happen?”

“Not anymore.” Rhett sounded exhausted. “Curses quit working when all the other autonomous process spells did.”

“Still. I don’t like it.” Flora drummed her fingers on her thigh. “Who do you know that knows about curses?”

“That guy from Oklahoma, maybe,” Rhett said. “With the big hair. I don’t remember his name. Taylor, maybe?”

Flora nodded. “Oh, I know who you mean. I’ll look him up when I get back home.”

“How can you look him up? There have to be a million guys named Taylor in Oklahoma.” Link said.

Flora generously ignored his ridiculous estimate. “There’s fewer than a thousand magical professionals in the United States. Also, I’m pretty sure I follow him

on Instagram.”

“Oh.” Link slumped down in the chair and laid his head on the overstuffed armrest. The next thing he knew, Flora was shaking his shoulder.

Link lifted his head and rubbed his face. “Where’s Rhett?”

“He kinda… stormed off,” Flora said. “I think he went up to the workroom.”

“To clean it up, maybe.” Link climbed out of the chair and stretched. Both his knees popped as he stood. “You heading home?”

“Yeah. Keep an eye on Rhett, okay?” Flora asked as they walked to the pantry. “I’m worried about him.”

“Of course,” Link said. He opened the pantry door to reveal the shelves of food. “Um.”

“Oh, I have to do it.” Flora closed the door and reopened it, revealing her office. “See you later, Link.”

Link gave her a little wave. “Bye.” The door shut behind her. Just to check, Link opened it again to find the pantry was back. He sighed and shut it again. There was a dark smear on his hand and a little shiver of adrenaline raced through him before he realized it was just his eye black, smeared from rubbing his face.

He also realized that at no point had he put on pants and had, in fact, gone through the entire ordeal in his boxer briefs. His tight, bright green, boxer briefs.

There was nothing Link could do but shake his head and go back to bed, so he did.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett spent the next several days avoiding Link and dodging Flora’s calls and texts. She finally came over and banged on his bedroom door until he yelled at her to fuck off and leave him alone.

“I don’t understand,” Link said as he and Flora went back to the kitchen. “Why is he so upset? He didn’t really get cursed.”

“I don’t know,” Flora responded, forehead crinkled in worry. “Aimee’s a a jerk, but she’s not dumb. Maybe she really did figure out a way to hurt him.”

“And how do you know it was Aimee, anyway? That package was from Botswana and she lives in Chicago, right? And if it _was_ her, how could she be sure Rhett would win the auction?” Link had a million questions like these.

“Oh, I think you were asleep before we talked about that.” Flora leaned against the counter. “Rhett got an email for the website that said something like, ‘You’ve previously searched for magical items, so this listing might interest you’ with a link, so I think Aimee spoofed the entire auction. Rhett was the only one who ever saw it.”

Link crossed his arms. “So she stole his money, too? Nice.”

“Well, I think that part would be fraud, not theft, but yeah.” Flora pushed herself upright with a sigh. “See if you can talk to him, okay? Or at least see if you can get the watch case away from him so I can get it looked at.”

“Okay.” Link watched Flora open the pantry door to her office. “How come that only works for you?”

“I have the key. Check it out.” Flora pulled up her sleeve to reveal the silver cuff she always wore. Link leaned in to give it a closer look and laughed. There was a skeleton key engraved on it.

“I’ll let you know if I can get anything out of him,” Link said as Flora walked into her office. “But don’t hold your breath.”

“I won’t.” Flora gave him a little wave and shut the door. As always, Link immediately opened it, and as always, found the pantry behind it. He made a face and went back to his own office.


	13. Chapter 13

Link couldn’t figure out how Rhett managed to avoid him so thoroughly. He knew Rhett was getting down to the first floor somehow, because food would be missing from the fridge and there would be dishes in the dishwasher. It was driving Link crazy.

He decided to stake out the kitchen, so he set himself up in the dining room where he could see the fridge through the kitchen door. A couple hours later, when Link was completely engrossed in his work, he heard the fridge open.

Link’s head snapped up. Rhett was in front of the fridge, rummaging through the contents. “Rhett!”

Rhett jumped and hit his head on the edge of the fridge. “Shit!” He spun around towards Link. “Link, what the hell.”

“What the hell, yourself,” Link said. “How did you get down here?”

“I came down the stairs,” Rhett replied.

“You did not! I would have seen you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, man. I came down the stairs.” Rhett turned back to the fridge.

“Do you have, like, an invisibility cloak or something?” Link remembered he was supposed to be checking in on Rhett, not starting petty arguments. “Wait, don’t answer that.”

“You okay, man?” Rhett asked, emerging with a container of roast beef and a bottle of spicy mustard. “You seem kinda stressed.”

“Gosh, I wonder why that could be?” Link laid a finger on his chin. He still felt petty. “Hmm, maybe it’s because someone tried to curse you and you haven’t talked to me or Flora for five days!”

Rhett got a plate out of the cupboard. “I’m fine,” he said.

“You’re clearly not!” Link said in exasperation. He closed his laptop with a snap. “You wouldn’t be hiding from me otherwise.”

Rhett sighed. “I’ll come sign your checks or whatever, okay? That’s really all you need.”

“Businesswise, yeah, but…” Link hesitated for a moment, stomach tied in a nervous knot. “You’re my friend, too. I don’t like it when you don’t talk to me.” It was the first time he’d explicitly referred to their relationship as a friendship, even though he’d thought of it that way for a long time.

Rhett paused in his sandwich making. “It’s nothing personal, Link. I just need time to figure some stuff out.”

“So _tell_ me that, instead of ghosting me!” Link insisted. “If you need space, I’ll give you space. Just don’t… shut me out, okay?”

“That’s fair, I guess,” Rhett replied. He got a bag of chips from the pantry and dumped some on his plate. “So, uh, I need some space for a while.”

“Absolutely,” Link said. He bit his lip nervously. “So, can I borrow that watch box? I just wanna make sure you’re gonna be okay…”

A brief flash of panic crossed Rhett’s face before he neutralized his expression. “Sure, I guess. I mean, it’s pointless, because curses don’t exist anymore, but if you insist…”

“I insist,” Link said firmly.

“I’ll put it on your desk later. I gotta get back to work. Seeya.” Rhett took his plate and a glass of water and headed towards the stairs. Link watched him go with a frown.

Had the watch case really been dangerous? Rhett’s change of expression and the way he insisted that testing was pointless suggested that it was. Had Aimee figured out a way to make a curse work? Had she done something else? Link was filled with questions and had no way to answer them.

He did, however, know someone who could help him. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and texted Flora. Time to get in touch with the Taylor guy in Oklahoma.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* 

Link had wondered how someone from Oklahoma would get to his place, but Flora said she would take care of it, and when the pantry doorbell rang, Link opened it to find Flora with a man with big, loose curls boinging off his head in all directions. He held a tacklebox and an object that looked like a 1950s style ray gun.

His name was actually Tyler, he was from Tulsa, and he owned a greenhouse and nursery. “The curse stuff is just a hobby, really,” he told Link.

Flora rolled her eyes. “He’s written three very well regarded books about the history of curses.”

“So, you’re not the magician?” Tyler asked. Link shook his head. “Um, where is he?”

Link sighed in exasperation. “Pretty sure he’s sulking upstairs. He won’t answer when I call him on the intercom and he locked me out of his hallway.” He didn’t mention that Rhett had put the watch box on his used plate and left both on Link’s desk.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Flora said. “I’ll go get him.” She headed off toward the stairs. Link could hear her stomping up them.

Link led Tyler into the dining room, where he put his tools out onto the table. Some were things that Link recognized, and some weren’t. Tyler was telling Link what they each did when Flora returned, alone and pissed off.

“Just start without him,” she said with a scowl when they looked at her.

Link retrieved the case from the kitchen counter where he’d parked it and handed it over to Tyler. The next twenty minutes were simultaneously fascinating and frustrating--he learned a lot about curses, but only by forcing Flora and Tyler to continually stop and explain everything they said.

It turned out that while the old style of curses, the autonomous process spells, were gone, there were other, mostly hypothetical ways to perform an object-based curse. “I’m guessing this is an attempt at that,” Tyler said, inspecting the push button with a tool that looked like a cross between a jeweler’s loupe and a kaleidoscope. “The object being, in this case, particles of some sort that were smeared on the blade.” He put down the loupe and carefully placed his thumbnails on the very edge of the button and pushed. A thin silver blade popped out.

“So there’s no way to get rid of the object, right?” Link asked. “Since it’s in the body.”

“Correct.” Tyler picked up the loupe and looked at the interior of the case..

Link shivered and rubbed the pad of his right thumb unconsciously. “But no one’s ever actually tested this?”

Tyler glanced up at Link warily. “Officially, no.” He dropped his gaze back to the watch box.

“The hell does _that_ mean?” Link demanded. He turned to Flora for help, but she looked just as uncomfortable as he felt, so he turned back to Tyler. “So there _are_ curses that work?”

“Um…”

“Shit.” Link turned to Flora again. “Do you think Aimee would be capable of doing that?”

“Do you mean, like, technical ability? Or morally.”

“Both, I guess.”

Flora took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Yes. She could, and she would.”

“Oh,” Link said in a small voice. “If it really is a curse, can you tell what it does?” he asked Tyler.

“There’s a piece of paper in here,” Tyler replied as he picked up a pair of tweezers. “Might be a note.”

Link and Flora watched in breathless anticipation as Tyler carefully extricated a folded piece of paper. He managed to unfold it and carefully read it, squinting to make out the words. Whatever he saw made his eyebrows shoot up and his mouth drop open. “You need to get Rhett down here, right now. He has to see this.”


	14. Chapter 14

Rhett wouldn’t answer Link on the intercom. He wouldn’t answer Flora when she got on, either. 

“I don’t have time for this immature bullshit,” Flora declared. “And I don’t have to play his stupid games.” She vanished up the stairs and returned moments later, phone in hand. “C’mon, Link.”

“Uh, where are we going?” Link asked, leaving Tyler inspecting the watch case at the dining room table.

“Upstairs.” Flora led Link into the kitchen, where she opened the door to her office and ushered him through. Link looked around with interest. The office was bright and modern. The magic door was set in an exterior wall, between two windows. Flora closed it and pulled an app up on her phone. “I took the coordinates of the hallway door,” she explained to Link. “Latitude, longitude, height above sea level, that sort of thing.”

“So instead of the pantry, it’ll open into Rhett’s hallway?” Link asked.

“Yep.”

“I thought magic doors could only go to set places.”

“Not this one,” Flora said proudly. “In theory, it should be able to connect to any other magical door.”

Link glanced out the window. It looked like they were in a regular suburban neighborhood. “How many ley lines intersect here?”

Flora laughed. “Four. And there’s a fifth that just barely misses.” There was a chime from her phone. “Alright, we’re good to go. You’ll have to open it, because it’s going to your house.”

Even though Link was completely expecting to see Rhett’s hallway when he opened the door, he was completely astonished to see Rhett’s hallway when he opened the door. Flora snickered at his expression.

“What about the lock on his door, though?” Link asked.

“He said you’d be able to open it in an emergency, right? Don’t you think this would qualify?”

Link rolled his eyes. “Who knows what Rhett thinks is an emergency? Running out of hot honey, maybe.” He started down the hall towards the bedroom door, but before he’d taken more than a few steps, it opened. 

Rhett emerged in a billow of starry white chiffon and wild hair. “ _What_?” he growled.

Link froze. He’d never seen Rhett like this. Based on Flora’s silence, she hadn’t either. Link swallowed. “There was a note in the box,” he said carefully.

“Yeah, I heard,” Rhett snapped. “What about it?”

“Tyler thinks you need to read it.”

“Pretty sure I already know what it says.”

The two men stared each other down. Link broke first. “ _I_ need to know what it says, and I don’t think he’s gonna let me read it unless you read it first.”

Rhett scoffed. “Why do you care?”

“Why do I care?” Link’s jaw dropped in incredulity. “I care because you’re my _friend_ , Rhett! And even if you don’t think of me as a friend, you’re my boss and my landlord, so I need to know what’s going on!”

Rhett started at him for a second before shoving past Link and heading downstairs. Flora was already sitting at the dining room table. She must have slipped out during the staredown.

“Lemme see it.” Rhett snatched the note out of Tyler’s hand, and Link nearly died of embarrassment at how rude Rhett was. He watched carefully as Rhett read. Rhett tried to keep his expression impassive, but Link caught a little flicker of… something. “About what I expected,” Rhett said as he dropped the note on the table. Link nearly overturned his chair with how quickly he leapt up to grab it.

He held it so both he and Flora could read it. Some of the words were smeared, but Link could read enough to get the gist. “Suffer for a year and a day… die alone… true love’s kiss..” He looked up. “What kind of fairy tale bullshit is this?”

Rhett sat down across from him. “Aimee bullshit. Sleeping Beauty is her favorite movie.”

Flora grabbed the note. “Where does it say ‘die alone’?”

“Right here.” Link pointed to it.

Flora frowned and squinted at the note. “But it’s all stained with fixat--” An expression of understanding crossed her face. “Oh! You can’t see it.”

“Uh, I guess?” Link had bigger things to worry about. “She’s trying to kill you! Shouldn’t we call the police?”

The three magic users swapped glances. “Yeah, but… that’s not going to break the curse,” Tyler said.

“And you’re sure it’s actually a curse?” Link asked him.

It was Rhett who answered. “I’m sure. I knew as soon as it stabbed me.”

“Oh,” Link said in a little voice. The four of them sat in unhappy silence.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The rest of the afternoon was spent dealing with the police, who quickly passed the case on to a magical crimes investigation unit, which Link thought would make an excellent Law & Order series.

“The problem with cases like this is that anyone who’s skilled enough to make this kind of device is also skilled enough to disappear,” the lead detective said to Link. She had bleached blonde hair piled up into an Amy Winehouse beehive and a mouth full of chewing gum that she snapped as she spoke. Apparently the magical investigation unit had different standards than the regular police. “The likelihood that this ever goes to trial is pretty minimal, especially since she’s already out of the country.”

“There aren’t, like, magical bounty hunters?” Link asked. That would also be a good TV show.

“A few. They’re in pretty high demand, though. A single curse? Probably not worth it.” The detective shrugged. “You should focus on breaking the curse.”

“Easier said than done,” Link mumbled as the detective went back to work. “True love’s kiss, are you _fucking_ kidding me?” Rhett had never mentioned any romantic relationships, and his reaction upon reading the note suggested that he had… _baggage._ Possibly baggage with Aimee Bradley?

Link resolved to talk to Rhett, sooner rather than later.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link decided that an ambush would be the most effective strategy. He gave Rhett a couple days to cool down. Once Rhett restored Link’s hallway door privileges, Link decided to make his move.

“Is Aimee your ex?” Link demanded when Rhett came into his office to sign some documents.

Rhett looked up from his paperwork, baffled. “What?”

“Is Aimee your ex!” Link repeated insistently.

“God, no.” Rhett shuddered. “Why would you think that?”

Link deflated a little. “The curse is so… romantic? I don’t know if that’s really the right word.”

“It's close enough,” Rhett said. “Aimee was always trying to set me up with people. Sometimes it worked, mostly it didn’t. Dating is such a pain in the ass.”

“Yeah.” Link had his own issues with dating.

Rhett flipped to a new page. “Gonna have to start again, though.”

“What?”

“Dating,” Rhett said. “I can’t just sit around waiting to die. I have to at least _try_ to find ‘true love’.” He rolled his eyes as he did finger quotes.

“Oh.” Link couldn’t imagine Rhett with a partner. He was too self centered, too caught up in his work. There didn’t seem to be any space in his life for another person. 

There was something else, too: Link didn’t want Rhett to find a partner. He’d only lived in the pink house for six months, but their life in the pink house was cozy and comfortable. Sure, he and Rhett bickered a lot, and sometimes yelled and slammed doors, but the anger never lasted. There was an unspoken understanding between them, and adding a third party would throw it out of balance.

Link tried to push his worries out of his mind. He’d just have to cross that bridge when it came to him. “Well, good luck,” he said.

Rhett shoved the papers back across the table. “Thanks, man. I’m gonna need it.”


	15. Chapter 15

Link had a _lot_ of questions about curses, so he went up to the workroom when he knew Rhett was out of the house and found one of Tyler’s books on the bookshelf. While fascinating, that particular book was more of a history of curses in the ancient world (Link was particularly interested in the Roman curse tablets from Bath, England, that has such requests as “Do not allow sleep or health to him who has done me wrong, whether man or woman or whether slave or free unless he reveals himself” for the theft of a cloak) and didn’t help answer Link’s questions about Rhett’s specific curse.

He ended up getting Tyler’s email from Flora. Tyler was perfectly happy to answer Link’s questions, even if Link didn’t always like the answers.

Q: Why was this kind of object based curse so much rarer in the past?

A: Tying a curse to an object is much trickier than an autonomous process spell, so most people didn’t bother until ambient magic levels crashed during WWI and never recovered.

Q: Was there another way the curse could be removed or broken?

A: Yes, Aimee could remove it if she so chose.

Q: Was the detective right when she said Aimee would probably never be caught?

A: Maybe? That’s not actually a question about curses.

Q: Is there an actual definition of “true love” somewhere?

A: No clue.

Q: Okay, how about “suffer”? What might that entail?

A: Probably something that Aimee knew Rhett particularly hated. Traditionally curses started mild and got worse over time, so the longer the curse lasted, the more Rhett would suffer.

Q: Are you _sure_ there’s not another way to get rid of the curse?

A: I’m sure.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Apparently, Rhett had decided that he was going to pretend that nothing was wrong, but he somehow did it in such a way that Link didn’t dare bring it up. It made him deeply, acutely anxious, but when he brought it up with Flora in the hope that she might be able to reach Rhett, she just shook her head.

“He’s a stubborn bastard,” she said. In the month since Rhett had been cursed, Flora had become a more frequent visitor to the pink house, and more as a friend than the business partner she’d started out as. She was still polished, but now she wore (expensive) jeans and sleek flats instead of her killer heels and dresses. Tonight, she and Link were drinking wine in the living room while Rhett hid up in his lab. “He won’t talk to me, either.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Link asked. He poured himself some more wine and held the bottle out to Flora. She nodded, so he poured some for her, too.

Flora shrugged and took a sip of wine. “This is pretty good. What is it?” She turned the bottle towards her. “Charles Shaw? I’ve never heard of it.”

“You’ve never heard of Two Buck Chuck?” Link asked in astonishment. Flora’s lifelong wealth had led her to become much more worldly than Link in many ways, which sometimes made him feel insecure, but then something like this would happen. “It’s called that ‘cause it’s two dollars at Trader Joe’s.”

Flora’s eyebrows shot up. “ _Really_?” She took another sip. “Wow.”

“What if,” Link began, “we set Rhett up on a blind date. Only he doesn’t know it’s a date.”

Flora snorted into her glass. “Can you imagine the look on his face once he figured it out?”

“I don’t know that many people around here, though,” Link said. “Bernadette only moved us here a couple years ago.”

“Maybe you should get on Tinder.”

“Like, pretending to be Rhett?” Link frowned. “I guess that could work.”

“No, I meant for yourself.”

“Uh.” Link felt extremely stupid for not realizing this would inevitably come up. “I don’t, um, I don’t really do that.”

“What, date?” Flora asked.

“Yeah…” Link stared into his wine glass. He hated trying to explain his feelings. “Like, if it’s someone I know already, maybe, but a stranger?” He shook his head firmly. “No way.”

“Ah.” Flora gazed at him as she took another sip of wine. “Tinder’s probably not for you, then.”

Link shook his head, relieved that he wouldn’t have to justify himself. “I couldn’t pretend to be Rhett, either. I don’t know what he wants in a partner. Like, not a clue.”

“Hmm.” Flora leaned back on the couch. “I know he used to have a boyfriend ages and ages ago, but he left because Rhett worked too much. That’s what Rhett said, anyway.”

“Maybe work is his true love,” Link suggested. “Maybe he should kiss the hallway door.” Flora stared at him for a moment and then they both burst into tipsy giggles.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

There was a weird tension in the pink house. Link didn’t know how long he could last before he cracked and begged Rhett to do _something_.

As it turned out, he wasn’t the one who cracked.

Link was in the middle of writing a strongly worded email to an architectural salvage place that was going out of business, stating that he _really_ didn’t appreciate that they took his (read: Rhett’s) money for a lot of 23 Victorian glass doorknobs without actually shipping him the doorknobs, when the hallway door burst open and a furious Rhett appeared.

“Did you call my mom?” he demanded, brandishing his phone at Link, who froze with his fingers over the keyboard.

“Uh, what?” Link stammered, doorknobs forgotten. He’d never seen Rhett so angry.

“My mom!” Rhett slapped his hand on the desk, making Link flinch. “Someone called my mom and told her about the curse. Was it you?”

“No! I swear!” Link scooted his office chair back a little. “I’ve never even talked to your mom.”

Rhett scowled at him and leaned over the desk. “Then who was it?”

“I don’t know!” Link pushed his chair back more until it hit the wall. “And don’t yell at me like that.”

Rhett abruptly stood up and retreated to the doorway. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Link said, and kicked himself, because it really wasn’t.

“It’s not,” Rhett said as he leaned against the door frame with his arms crossed. He still looked pissed. “If it wasn’t you, who was it?”

“Uh…” Link was a more than little annoyed with Rhett’s usual ‘acknowledge wrongdoing but don’t actually apologize’ act. “Flora? Tyler? Who else knows?”

“No one,” Rhett said. “Well, my parents, now, which means everyone else is gonna know because my mom can’t keep her damn mouth shut.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.” Rhett glanced down at his phone, then back at Link. “You _sure_ you didn’t call my mom?”

“I did not call your mom,” Link said firmly.

Rhett nodded once. “Then I gotta call Flo,” he said, and left the office in his usual swirl of satin. Link watched him go, and then grabbed his phone to send Flora a warning text.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The pantry doorbell rang forty-five minutes later. Link looked up from his keyboard with a frown. Flora hadn’t responded to his text, and she hadn’t texted to let him know she was coming over, which was a first. He got up and went downstairs.

Flora was in full killer businesswoman regalia, complete with dark lipstick and heels so high she’d be eye level with Rhett. It made Link feel very short and slovenly in his jeans and flannel shirt. “You better go put your war paint on,” she told Link grimly as she led the way up to the workroom. “We’re going upstairs.”

Link ducked into his bathroom to put on some eye black. He inspected himself in the mirror--dark undereye circles not covered by the makeup, messy, overgrown hair, and a stress line between his brows. The last month and a half had weighed on him heavily. Link made a face at himself and rejoined Flora in the hall.

“So is this an intervention or what?” he asked as they went through the door he’d just exited.

“Nope,” Flora said. “This is a fight.”

“Ah.” Link paused as he put his foot on the first step of the stairs up to Rhett’s workroom. “I don’t really want to fight with Rhett, though.”

“You’re just my hype man,” Flora said, as though that were reassuring. “C’mon.” Link followed her reluctantly up the stairs, the carpet runner muffling their footsteps.

“Rhett McLaughlin!” Flora called out as she stepped out onto the wooden floorboards of the workroom. Link watched in jealous amazement as she strode fluidly across the space, neatly avoiding Rhett’s ley line grid without even looking at it. He always felt like a kid playing hopscotch when he had to walk over it. “It’s time to quit wallowing and _do_ something.”

Rhett looked up from where he sat at the counter with his head in his hands.”You called my _mom_ , you asshole.”

Flora shrugged. “You wouldn’t listen to me and you wouldn’t listen to Link. I realize calling your mom was kind of the nuclear option, but time is limited, so I had to do _something_.”

“Link never talked to me,” Rhett mumbled. Flora turned and looked at Link with her eyebrows raised in a question. Link, who had retreated to the grid-free safety of the reading nook, held his hands up helplessly in a shrug.

“He’s my boss…” was all Link could come up with. He still struggled with Rhett’s lack of boundaries when it came to their relationship. Rhett treated him like an equal, but in reality he had a huge amount of power over Link, and Link was acutely aware of it.

Flora gave him a little _we’re going to talk about this later_ look, and turned her attention back to Rhett. “So what’s your plan? Are you just going to let Aimee win?”

“I wish she’d just sued me,” Rhett said. He laid his head down on his arms on the counter. 

“Well, she didn’t,” Flora retorted. “So are you just going to literally lay down and die because you don’t want to go on a date?”

“Maybe,” came Rhett’s muffled voice.

“Oh my _god_.” Flora stomped over to Rhett and hauled him up off the stool. “Jesus, look at you.”

Rhett, never debonair even at the best of times, looked particularly rough. His beard was scruffy and untrimmed, his hair probably hadn’t seen a brush since he got cursed, his robe was cheap, wrinkled polyester satin, and his Vans were worn and dirty.

Wait, Vans?

Link frowned. Rhett never wore shoes in the house. At first Link thought he was one of those people who were very concerned about their carpets, but it turned out Rhett was just lazy. The closest he ever got to indoor shoes was a pair of fleece slippers that he wore on cold days.

“--clean up and then you are going to make an effort, do you understand?” Link missed the beginning of Flora’s order to Rhett, but he got the gist of it. She had Rhett by the shoulders and was staring him straight in the eyes. “Link’s going to help, okay?”

“ _What_?”

The taller pair ignored Link’s outburst. Rhett slapped Flora’s hands off his shoulders and drew in a deep breath. Link settled in the reading chair and watched them argue. It reminded him of being a little kid and hearing his parents argue in the next room. He had the same sick feeling in his stomach, too.

Flora won, eventually. By the time she left an hour later, Rhett had three different dating apps downloaded on his phone, and Link had been deputized to monitor his progress. The three of them were all furious at each other, and as soon Flora left, Link retreated to his room, slamming the door behind him. He collapsed on his bed, exhausted.

No matter what happened, the next ten and a half months were going to suck.


	16. Chapter 16

Rhett didn’t go on any dates, but he spent a lot of time on his phone, swiping and typing and making faces, so Link assumed he was at least _trying_. That’s what he told Flora, anyway.

Progress on the door project had ground to a halt. Flora was trying to interest investors, and when Rhett wasn’t fooling around with his phone, he made a few stupid rich person toys and worked on a new stained glass window.

“You know those M.C. Escher tessellation pictures where birds morph into fish or whatever?” he asked Link, who nodded. “That’s what this is going to be, so you’ll actually be able to see it change if you watch long enough.”

“Why don’t the other ones change while you watch?” Link asked.

“I couldn’t figure out how to animate the transition,” Rhett admitted as he laid black and white glass diamonds out on the counter. “That’s why this one is a gradual pattern.”

“That’s really clever,” Link said. He took a deep breath. “So, uh, how’s Tinder working out for you?”

Rhett gave him such a glare that Link stepped back slightly. “I’m gonna kill Flo.”

“So, not great?” Link asked innocently.

“Well, a lot of people have their height in their profile, so I added mine, and _immediately_ got about six stupid pickup lines about ‘climbing me like a tree’.”Rhett rolled his eyes. “Then a couple asking if it’s true what they say about tall guys.”

“Long inseam?” Link suggested innocently.

Rhett snorted. “I wish. These people all just want to hook up.”

“Maybe you should put that in your profile, that you’re looking for more than a hookup.”

“But I’m _not_ ,” Rhett said. “I don’t even want the hookup.” He reconsidered. “Well, maybe.”

Link leaned onto the counter and rested his cheek on his hand. “So hook up. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Rhett frowned thoughtfully as he continued laying out the glass tiles. “Maybe I will.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Two nights later, Link was lounging in his orange armchair with a plate of nachos on his lap and _Mean Girls_ on the TV when Rhett burst through the front door, slamming it behind him so hard Link was surprised the stained glass panel of golden poppies didn’t fall out. Rhett pointed an accusatory finger at him.

“I am _never_ ,” he growled, “taking dating advice from you again.”

Link didn’t respond. Instead, he just watched Rhett stomp off towards the stairs.

“Okay,” Link said when he was alone again. Then he ate another nacho.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“C’mon, hand it over,” Flora said. She reached out her hand and crooked her fingers. “Let’s see what you got.”

“No way.” Rhett pulled his phone out of her reach, which brought it into grabbing range for Link, who snatched it. He ducked past Rhett and handed the phone off to Flora. “Damn it, Link!”

“It’s for your own good,” Link said. “And I’m obviously not the right person to help.”

“What’s the passcode?” Flora asked.

“I am _not_ giving you my code!” Rhett protested.

At the exact same time, Link said, “It’s his birthday, 1016.”

“You _asshole_ ,” Rhett hissed. Link gave him the double finger guns with a grin.

Flora spent a few moments surveying Rhett’s dating profile. She held the phone up, an unflattering selfie on the screen. “Seriously? You look like a corpse.”

“Flora!” Link scolded.

“Well, he does.” Flora turned back to Rhett. “Are you trying to sabotage yourself?”

Rhett opened his mouth to say something biting, but then his expression softened a little. “Maybe.”

Flora sighed and handed the phone back. “Look, I know you don’t want to do this, but you have to try.” Link nodded in agreement. “For one thing, I’ve invested a huge amount of money into the door project, and I’d really like it to pay off.”

“That’s fair,” Rhett said. “So… what do you think I should do?”

Somewhere deep in LInk’s chest, a little spark of hope ignited. It was the first time Rhett had shown any real willingness to work on breaking the curse.

“Well, you should probably mention that you’re a magician, for one thing.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty important,” Link said. “It’s, like, your whole thing.”

Rhet grimaced. “People ask the stupidest questions, though.”

“Bummer,” Flora said. “You need a better picture, too. We have that investor meeting next Tuesday, so get Link to take some pictures of you in a suit.”

Link’s eyebrows shot up. Rhett in a suit? He’d believe it when he saw it. “Wait, Tuesday?” Link pulled out his phone and checked the calendar. “You have a dentist appointment then.”

“Then reschedule it,” Rhett said before turning back to Flora. “Anything else?”

“Um… I don’t know,” Flora admitted with a shrug. “I’ve been married for sixteen years. I have no idea how this stuff works.”

Rhett looked from Flora to Link and back. “You two are the worst possible wingmen, I swear.”

Link and Flora looked at each other and shrugged in unison.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Hey, Link.”

_Hey Link hey Link hey Link._

Something like eighty percent of Link’s interactions with Rhett began with that phrase, and when the intercom was involved, like it was now, the percentage rose to almost one hundred.

Link shoved his chair back from the desk and rolled over to the wall. He pushed the intercom button. “Yeah?”

“Can you come to my room? I need help.”

“Is it an emergency?” Eight months in the pink house, and Link still hadn’t been in Rhett’s room. Not that he hadn’t tried the knob a few times, just to check…

Rhett’s laugh, a sound Link hadn’t heard much of the past two months, came through the crackly speaker. “Yeah, a fashion emergency.”

“Uh, okay. Give me a minute to finish up in here.” Link shoved himself off the wall and coasted back to his desk. A fashion emergency? Well, Flora was going to pick him up in half an hour for their investor meeting, so Rhett probably wanted Link’s opinion on what tie to wear, or something. While Link was not the world’s most fashionable man, he didn’t live in elastic waist pants and various robes like _some_ people he knew. (Link, admittedly, still had Rhett’s indigo kimono, but he didn’t wear it. Instead, it lived draped over his office chair. Rhett could have taken it back at any time, but hadn’t.)

A couple minutes later, Link found himself in Rhett’s hallway, in front of Rhett’s bedroom door. It looked exactly like his own bedroom door, dark stained wood with an ornate brass doorknob. Link raised a hand and knocked gently.

“Come in!” came the answer from inside. Link grabbed the doorknob and felt the same little _click_ as he did when the front door unlocked itself for him. He pushed it open. 

“Ohhh…” Link sighed. The room was beautiful, bigger than his bedroom and with more windows. There was even a tiled fireplace on the wall across from the bed. Rhett had the same sort of antique furniture with contemporary decorations as Link did, but something about them seemed richer and cozier than Link’s. There was a large walk in closet, where Link could see dozens of robes hanging up, and another door that he assumed led to the bathroom.

In the middle of the room was Rhett, who looked mildly panicked. His beard was neatly trimmed and his hair was tamed with some sort of pomade, but all he was wearing was a white undershirt, gray boxer briefs, argyle socks, and his scuffed up Vans. There was a very nice camel-colored suit laid out on the bed, with a few different shirts and ties. Link was honestly surprised that Rhett owned more than one dress shirt.

“So, uh, what’s the pro--” Link noticed the Vans. “Please tell me you aren’t wearing those shoes.”

Rhett glanced down. “What? No. God, I’m not that clueless.”

“Okay, good.” Link frowned. “Since when do you wear shoes in the house, anyway? I’ve been meaning to ask.”

“Oh, uh, I’ve been stubbing my toes a lot lately,” Rhett said. “I think I might have broken my pinky toe a couple weeks ago, so it just seemed safer this way.”

“Stubbing your toes a lot?” Link repeated in confusion. “Like, all of a sudden?”

“Yeah… so, you know how the curse said I’d suffer?” Rhett asked.

“Yeah.”

“Preeetty sure that’s why.”

Link stared at him for a moment, stupefied. “You’ve been cursed to stub your toes?” he asked finally.

“Yeah, and it fucking hurts!” Rhett said. “But forget about my toes and tell me which shirt I should wear.”

Link had more questions about the toes, but he put them aside for later. He crossed his arms and looked at the clothes on the bed thoughtfully. “This is a serious business meeting, right?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t bother to get dressed up if it wasn’t.”

“Okay, you probably shouldn’t wear a tan suit, then. What else do you have?”

“What’s wrong with a tan suit?” Rhett asked in bewilderment.

“It’s too casual,” Link said. “Remember when Obama wore a tan suit for his State of the Union and everyone acted like it was a big fucking deal?”

“No.”

“Do you have anything charcoal or navy, something darker like that?” Link walked over to the closet and peered inside. Rhett had _so many_ robes.

“This is the only suit I have,” Rhett said. Link turned around to stare at him.

“How on Earth do you only own a tan suit? Where did you get it?”

“I was the best man when my brother got married a couple years ago. All the groomsmen had brown suits.”

Link took a deep breath in and blew it out slowly. “At least it’s a really nice suit. You’re gonna have to be pretty conservative with everything else, though, so…” He sorted through the shirts and pulled out the plainest one, navy with tiny gray dots, and paired it with a silvery blue floral tie. “There.”

Rhett smoothed the tie down over the shirt and nodded approvingly. “How do you know this stuff?”

“Bernadette organized fundraising events all the time,” Link said. “I learned a lot about dress codes.”

“Huh.” Rhett gave him an appraising look. “Thanks, man.”

“Yeah, anytime,” Link said. He went to leave--it was okay to see Rhett in his underwear, and it was okay to see him fully clothed, but something about the idea of watching him actually get dressed seemed inappropriate.

“Lemme know when Flo gets here!” Rhett yelled after him. Link gave him a thumbs up as he walked away.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Really?” Flora said when she saw Rhett. “A tan suit?”


	17. Chapter 17

Several hours later, Link heard footsteps on the stairs. Apparently, much like only Flora could open the door to her office, Rhett could let himself into his own house without ringing the doorbell. “Hey, how’d your meeting go?” he called when Rhett appeared at the top of the stairs.

Rhett came into the office and grinned at him. “It went really well! They seemed really impressed with our proposal. The head honcho said he’d never seen anything like it before.”

Link was genuinely impressed. He knew Rhett was smart and made amazing things, but his business acumen was… lacking. It was a large part of why he’d hired Link. Flora was almost certainly the leader in the investment meeting, but Rhett had apparently held his own. “That’s great, Rhett!”

Rhett laughed. “You were right about the suit, too.”

“Of course I was,” Link said. He heard Flora’s voice in his mind’s ear. _Get Link to take some pictures of you in a suit._ Rhett was relaxed and happy and looked extremely put together as he leaned against the door frame, so Link surreptitiously turned on his camera before whipping his phone up to take a few quick pictures.

“What was that for?” Rhett asked in bewilderment.

“Tinder.”

“Oh, right.”

“I’ll have to take some of you in one of your usual outfits, too,” Link said as he scrolled through the pictures. The afternoon light reflecting off the butter-colored walls did really nice things to Rhett’s hair. He selected a couple pictures to send to Rhett. “People need to know what they’re getting into.”

“I’m not sure how you manage to be helpful _and_ be a jackass at the same time,” Rhett said. “It’s honestly kind of impressive.”

“Thanks!” Link beamed at him. “I’m going to put that on my resume.”

Rhett shook his head and tried to look disapproving, but Link could see the tiniest smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Alright, hand it over.” Rhett glumly unlocked his phone and handed it over to Flora, who opened his dating profile. “Oh, wow, this is a really nice picture. Did you take this, Link?”

“Yeah.” Rhett’s main profile picture was now him in his tan suit, leaning against the door frame of Link’s office.

Flora scrolled. The second picture was a fairly nice mirror selfie with Rhett in a t-shirt and joggers. “This one’s pretty good, too.” She got to the third picture and burst into laughter. “Seriously?”

Link let loose the giggles he’d been struggling to hold back. Rhett grinned, too. The third picture was Rhett in his red Renaissance Festival robe with the hood pulled up. He stood on the stairs and leaned over the quartz orb, which lit his face with an eerie glow.

“I thought people should know what they were getting into,” Link explained.

“How’d you get the crystal to glow?” Flora asked.

“Rhett set his phone to maximum brightness and we taped it to the back of the ball,” Link said. “It worked really well.”

“It seems to have worked to get you some attention. I saw that you had some messages.” Flora handed the phone back. “Anything interesting?”

Rhett made an _eh_ gesture with his hand. “There’s a few guys who aren’t looking for a hookup. A couple of them seem okay, so I’m just sort of seeing where it goes.”

Flora glanced at Link, who shrugged. He wanted Rhett to get out there and try harder, but he also knew nothing was more unattractive than desperation. He also knew that pushing Rhett would backfire. The very fact that Rhett was actually _talking_ to people was a miracle. If he wanted to see where that went, Link and Flora would just have to let him.

“Well, good luck,” Flora said to him. She turned back to Link. “You ready to go over that financial stuff?”

“Yeah, let’s go.” Link followed Flora to the dining room, where they planned on going through all the paperwork from the investor meeting.

Rhett stayed standing in the kitchen, typing away on his phone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link was worried. It had been three months since the night of the curse, and nine months since he’d moved into the pink house. Rhett spent a lot of time on his phone, but on the rare occasions that Link asked for an update, he’d just shrug.

“How long does it take to fall in love with someone?” Link asked Flora when she stopped by his office on her way down from Rhett’s workroom. “I mean… he’s gonna have to meet some of these people eventually. He’s kind of on a deadline here.”

“I know,” Flora said with a sigh. “I told him that I need him to make a real effort or I’m going to take steps toward dissolving our partnership.”

Link’s eyes widened. “ _Whoa_.” 

“Yeah, he’s really pissed at me right now, so sorry if he yells at you or whatever,” Flora said. “But I’d do the same thing if he had treatable cancer and was refusing medical care.”

“I guess…” Link wasn’t sure if he quite agreed with Flora’s comparison, but he certainly agreed that Rhett needed a kick in the ass. “He just makes me so fucking mad sometimes.”

Flora snorted. “That’s pretty much the entire Rhett McLaughlin experience.”

Link smiled a little sadly. “Yeah.”

“I gotta go,” Flora said as she checked the time on her phone. “Let me know if anything interesting happens.”

“I will. Thanks for talking to him. I feel like he listens to you more than he listens to me.”

Flora raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Really? I think he listens to _you_ more.”

“As long as he listens to one of us, I guess…” Link trailed off. “See you next week.” Flora gave him a little wave and went downstairs, leaving Link alone in his office, feeling defeated and helpless.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Two days later, Link and Rhett were in the living room, each on their own device as a baseball game played on the TV. Link only had a loose grasp of the rules of baseball, but there was something about the ebb and flow of the action and the crowd sounds and how buddy-buddy the announcers were that he found very soothing. It was an excellent background soundtrack to his Reddit scrolling.

Rhett, as usual, was typing away on his phone. Every so often, something would make him laugh, making Link jerk and look over at him. It was possible that Rhett was just shitposting on Twitter, but Link hoped he was “seeing where it goes” with one of his Tinder matches.

Half an hour later, Rhett spoke up. “So, uh… I have a date Thursday night.”

Link twisted around in his chair with a grin. “Rhett! That’s great!”

“Yeah.” Rhett had a little smile on his face. “This guy seems pretty cool.”

“Can I see his picture?” Link asked. Rhett nodded and handed over the phone. Thomas, 37, had beautiful straight teeth, sandy hair, sunglasses, and a chocolate lab. His bio stated that he taught high school physics, loved his dog, and wanted someone who was looking for something stable and long term. “So what are you going to do?”

“We’re gonna go to that 24 hour diner with the weird pies and then we’re going axe throwing.”

“Axe throwing?”

“Axe throwing.”

“Sounds dangerous.” Link passed the phone back. “Have fun, be safe.”

“I make no promises,” Rhett said, “But I’ll do my best.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Things with Thomas didn’t go anywhere, but that was alright, because going on one date broke through Rhett’s reluctance and he went on several more in quick succession.

“I think maybe I should have tried this a while ago,” Rhett said to Link one morning a few weeks after his date with Thomas. “I’ve been spending too much time alone.”

“You spend time with me,” Link pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s not like we ever _do_ anything.”

“We could, though.” 

All Rhett said in response was, “Yeah, I guess,” so Link didn’t suggest anything.

He didn’t ask Rhett much about the dates, either, just if he had a nice time or not. Part of that was because Link didn’t want to do anything that might spook Rhett, and part was because he was still uneasy about the idea of the ways his life might change if Rhett found a partner. Then he’d feel guilty and stupid about feeling that way, because things would be even worse if Rhett _didn’t_ find a partner.

Rhett, who was never the most observant person at the best of times, didn’t seem to notice the distance growing between him and Link. Flora did, though.

“You need to get out of this house,” she said. “You should come have dinner at my place.”

Link glanced at his phone. “Kinda early, isn’t it?”

“Not in San Antonio,” Flora replied. “I think Javier’s making pot roast.”

“Well… okay.” Link saved his work and rolled his chair back from the desk. He turned to the wall to call Rhett, only to find that the intercom wasn’t there. “Uh…”

“Oh, sorry.” Flora turned away. “Try again.”

Link turned away from the wall as well, counted to three, and turned back. The intercom was there. Link pushed the button. “Hey, Rhett, I’m going to Flora’s for dinner.”

“Uh, okay,” came the response. “I’m probably going out, anyway.”

Flora gave Link a wry little smile, and he followed her down the stairs to the pantry.


	18. Chapter 18

The rest of Flora’s house was just as stylish as her office, just much less tidy. Link could smell something delicious as Flora led him out of the office. He could also hear kid voices, followed by the sound of running feet and the appearance of a little boy. “Mama!”

“Hi, baby.” Flora crouched down on her high heels and opened her arms for a hug. She hefted the boy up and stood, still balanced on her heels, so he could see Link face to face. “Link, this is JJ.”

“Hi, JJ,” Link said. 

“Hi!” JJ yelled. Flora kissed him on the cheek and set him down. 

“Go tell your dad I brought someone to dinner, okay?” she asked. JJ nodded and ran off. Flora and Link followed. They reached a gorgeous eat-in kitchen where a man with thinning, curly hair, a matching beard, and the very definition of a dad-bod was leaning against the counter with a toddler in his arms and a beer next to him. Flora kissed them both and introduced the man as her husband Javier and the baby as her daughter Coco. Javier greeted Link warmly, but Coco just glared at him suspiciously with her thumb in her mouth.

Dinner was delicious and Flora’s family was very welcoming, especially JJ, who told Link all about his favorite dinosaurs. It struck Link that Aimee’s curse would have no effect on Flora, because a kiss from any of her family members would instantly break it.

Link had long ago accepted that he just wasn’t wired the way most people were when it came to romantic relationships. He’d only ever had two, both were with people he’d already known for a long time, and neither had lasted very long. 

Until recently, it rarely bothered him, but living with Rhett’s dating attempts and seeing Flora’s happy family brought up some unhappy old feelings for Link. Feelings that there was something wrong with him, feelings that he would end up lonely and alone, feelings that he was missing out on something essential to the human experience.

“Alright, spill,” Flora demanded after dinner, when she and Link were out on the deck in the backyard. It was surprisingly warm for the middle of winter, but it _was_ South Texas. Flora had the rest of the bottle of wine they’d had with dinner, something that was more expensive than Two Buck Chuck but not noticeably different to Link, and she poured them each a half glass. “What’s going on?”

“Uhh…” Link stared up at the wispy clouds streaking the sky above them. “I dunno. I really liked how things were going and now everything’s changed, and no matter what happens with the curse, it’s never coming back.”

“Yeah.” Flora took a sip of her wine.

“And it’s just… Rhett doesn’t really treat me like an employee, you know? Usually, anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was really weird at first, because I was with Bernadette for so long and she was completely the opposite, but somehow it just worked with Rhett.” Link shrugged. “It usually takes me a pretty long time to get comfortable in a new house, but not this time.”

“When’s the last time you had your own place?” Flora asked.

Link drank some wine and thought. “Probably like ten years? But that was only for a few years. I was a nanny before that.”

Flora laughed. “No wonder you’re so good with JJ.”

“He’s pretty funny,” Link said. “And he looks just like you.”

“Right? No DNA test needed there.” Flora poured herself a little more wine. “So what are you going to do?”

“Ugh, I don’t knoooww.” Link slumped in his chair. “Rhett doesn’t pay any attention to me anymore. I mean, he never really paid that much attention to me anyway, but it’s different now. And I feel really dumb for caring this much.”

“It’s not dumb,” Flora said. “I’ve been in the same situation with my friends before, and it sucks.”

Link stared unhappily into his wine glass. “I don’t think we’re actually friends.”

Flora looked at him in surprise. “Really? Rhett certainly does.”

“He does?”

“Yeah, he said something like… months and months ago, about how relieved he was to finally have someone competent _and_ likeable.” Flora put her empty glass on the table. “He really does like you a lot, Link.”

“Well, he never says anything like that to me.”

“Do you want me to talk to him?” Flora asked.

“No,” Link said. “And please don’t tell him what I said about him, either.”

“God, no,” Flora said. “I just wanted to know what was going on with you, ‘cause you’re my friend.” She considered that for a moment. “Actually, you’re more my friend than Rhett is.”

“Really?” Link asked in surprise.

“You see him on this deck?” Flora gestured to the empty chairs stacked next to the railing. “You do not, because I’ve never invited him over. But I invited _you_.”

Link was genuinely touched, and a little embarrassed. He smiled shyly down at his lap. “Thank you, Flora.”

“Cheers to that.” Flora held out her empty glass, and Link clinked his glass against it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“I seriously cannot believe so many businesses won’t take a credit card payment,” Rhett grumbled as Link carefully laid each check out on the desk for him to sign. Link rolled his eyes. He’d managed to find other companies selling the same supplies that _would_ take a card, but Rhett declined the switch to most of them because it was slightly more expensive/he knew the owner/some other thin pretense. Link realized that what Rhett _really_ wanted was something to complain about.

He certainly had plenty to complain about these days. There was the whole online dating thing, which was the source for an endless vein of gripes, and then there was the curse itself. Along with the stubbed toes, Rhett was now prone to paper cuts (which is why Link laid out the checks instead of handing over a stack like he used to), socks sliding down into his shoes, tangled headphone cords, clogged pens… it had reached the point that any little inconvenience had started sending Rhett into a spiral of instability. Link had been genuinely concerned for Rhett’s mental state the day they figured out that the same toaster setting gave Link a perfect golden slice and Rhett a rectangle of carbon.

“Are you going out tonight?” Link asked Rhett. If he was, which pretty likely considering it was Friday, Link was planning on eating several bowls of cereal while watching K-dramas on Netflix. He didn’t like watching anything with subtitles when Rhett was around, because Rhett would just start talking to him without giving Link any time to pause his show.

“Yeah, I’m going to that Egyptian exhibit at the museum with Adam, and then we’re gonna get dinner,” Rhett said. “After that… I dunno.”

“Adam?” Link asked. Was he supposed to know that was?

“Yeah, Adam,” Rhett said. “This is the third time we’re going out. He’s the tower climber.”

“Oh, _that_ guy.” Something occurred to Link. “Aren’t you afraid of heights?”

“Yeah, he showed me a video he took from the top of a tower and I kind of wanted to puke.” Rhett didn’t sound like someone who wanted to puke. He sounded like someone who was excited to go on a date, which made Link very, very relieved.

“Awesome, man. I hope you have a great time,” Link said. He did, too.

So why didn’t he feel happy?


	19. Chapter 19

Flora was right about Link needing to get out more, so he joined a gym and signed up for a couple different classes. Maybe he’d end up making some friends, too. Anything was better than sitting at home by himself, worrying.

For those nights when he _was_ going to sit at home, Link picked up a couple new hobbies: audiobooks and very large jigsaw puzzles. Either one alone failed to hold his interest, but they worked very well together . Link’s current puzzle was a view of the Adirondacks in fall, and his current book was _The Moonstone_ by Wilkie Collins. He had the outline of the puzzle completed and had started on part of the skyline as he considered how much he had in common with the narrator, house steward Gabriel Betteredge. They were both trusted household staff dealing with cursed circumstances, although Gabriel had a much better grasp on his duties as a servant versus his feelings as a person. Link envied him that, although he didn’t envy much else about Gabriel’s Victorian life.

Link gradually became aware of a sound. He paused the book and pulled out one of his earbuds. How he could hear the sound clearly. It was the mechanical bell on the front door. Link frowned. Anyone who came by after dark and could work the bell probably knew about it already, but he hadn’t been expecting any visitors.

He got up and tried to peer through the stained glass (which showed a single blooming water lily), but couldn’t make anything out beyond a vaguely human shape. Link grabbed the doorknob, the lock unlocking itself at his touch, and cracked the door open. A blast of frigid air blew into the house. “Hello?”

There was a guy on the stoop in a navy peacoat and a red knit cap with a pompom on top. “Um, hi,” he said. “Is Rhett here?”

“Maybe,” Link said, which was stupid, because why would he say that if Rhett wasn’t there? “Can I ask…?”

“Oh, sure. My name’s Adam… I was supposed to pick Rhett up so we could go out tonight,” the pompom guy replied.

“Oh!” Link exclaimed. “Sorry, please come in. Rhett didn’t tell me he was expecting anyone.” He opened the door wide for Adam and inspected him, trying not to be obvious about it. Adam was about his height, but stocky where Link was slender. He had dark eyes and, Link saw when he pulled off his hat, the shaved head of a man who’d decided not to fight his male pattern baldness anymore.

“So, you’re Rhett’s roommate?” Adam asked, shoving his hat into his coat pocket.

“Yeah…” Link said. He’d have to ask Rhett what he’d been telling people his relationship with Link was. “Link Neal,” he said, holding out his hand.

Adam shook it. His fingers were cold and calloused. “Adam Newhouse.”

“I’ll let Rhett know you’re here,” Link said, turning to the wall. The intercom was nowhere to be seen. “Oh, can you look into the dining room for a minute? The intercom won’t show up if we can see it.”

“‘The intercom won’t show up if we can see it’…” Adam repeated as he obediently turned towards the dining room. “What?”

“Well, it’s magic,” Link said. He looked at the wall behind him, where the intercom had materialized. “See?”

Adam followed Link’s gaze and his mouth dropped open. “Holy _shit_.”

“Yep.” Link grinned at Adam’s astonished expression. The intercom was completely routine for him now, so it was amusing to see someone else’s reaction. He pushed the button. “Hey Rhett, Adam’s here.”

“Oh, thanks. I’ll be down in a minute,” came Rhett’s voice through the crackly speaker.

“Can I try?” Adam asked eagerly.

“Um, I don’t think it’ll work for you, but you can try.” Link stepped aside so Adam could push the button. Nothing happened. “Yeah, it’s really just so Rhett can hassle me.”

“You know, he did some tricks for me before, but this is completely different,” Adam said, examining the intercom closely.

“Did he do the thing with the two glasses of water?” Link asked.

“Yeah. That was awesome.”

“And the fork trick?”

“Yeah, and it freaked me out. Ugh, with his eye!” Adam shuddered dramatically. 

“That one’s not actually magic,” Link said. “It’s a sleight of hand trick he got out of a Penn and Teller book. He thinks it’s funny to have a fake magic trick in with his real magic tricks.”

Adam shook his head ruefully. “That son of a bitch.” He’d already figured out the most basic aspect of Rhett’s personality, so Link decided Adam was alright.

“Hey!” The two men turned toward the stairs to see Rhett. He had on jeans, a flannel shirt, and a long trench coat that Link immediately categorized in his mind as a robe substitute. Rhett had been dressing more like a regular person lately, even when he didn’t have a date. It was weird.

“Hi!” Adam said with a big grin. Rhett greeted him with a hug, which made Link feel like he was intruding. He retreated a few steps towards the dining room.

“So I see you met Link,” Rhett said, neatly sidestepping exactly what their relationship was, much to Link’s annoyance.

“I did!” Adam glanced at his watch. “And I’d love to stay, but we really have to get going.” Rhett nodded.

“Well, have fun, drive safe.” Link watched them leave and closed the door behind them. It locked itself as he took his hand off the knob, and he noticed that the stained glass panel had changed to a spray of red and yellow carnations. He traced his finger over the cold glass before returning to the dining room, which now felt far too large and far too empty.

Link put his ear buds back and and returned to the Adirondacks and Victorian England.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link really wanted to talk to Flora before she went upstairs to see Rhett, but her arrival happened at exactly the same time that his call to Rhett’s car insurance finally picked up.

“Hi, thanks for holding!” a cheerful voice said. “How can I help you?”

“Uh…” Link tried to remember what he was calling about as he opened the pantry door for Flora. “I, um… oh! My windshield is cracked, so I need to get it replaced.” He ran back up to his office where he had all Rhett’s insurance paperwork. By now, Link knew Rhett’s birthday, social security number, mother’s maiden name, and any number of other personal identifying information, but he simply could not remember the make and model of Rhett’s SUV. It was a charcoal gray, he knew that much.

Several hours later, Link was in the kitchen, spreading individual saltines with peanut butter and eating them one by one, when Flora walked in. She watched him carefully stuff an entire saltine into his mouth, like a hamster, and shook her head. “You are _so_ white,” she said.

“Mmhmph,” Link agreed. There was no denying it. He held up a finger for Flora to wait as he struggled to swallow his mouthful. It felt like he was in the old Aaron Burr _Got Milk?_ Ad.

“So Rhett said you met his boyfriend last night,” Flora said. “What did you think?”

“Mmph!” Link swallowed. “They’re boyfriends now?”

“That’s what Rhett said. I’m just glad he’s making progress.”

“Yeah.” Link thought for a moment. “Adam seems okay. I mean, I only met him for a couple minutes, but when I told him the fork trick wasn’t actually magic, he called Rhett a ‘son of a bitch’, which I thought was a good sign.”

Flora nodded thoughtfully. “Rhett _is_ a son of a bitch.”

“Yeah.” Link made another saltine, with less peanut butter this time, and bit off half of it. “I’m… guardedly optimistic, I guess.”

“That’s a good way to phrase it,” Flora said. She plonked her attache case on the counter and unsnapped the fasteners. “I have something for you.”

“Oh?” Link grimaced as Flora reached inside, her arm going deeper than it should have been able to. The inside of the attache case was a large drawer in her desk at home, and the idea of Flora’s hand in San Antonio while the rest of her body was in his house gave him the creeps. He couldn’t stop imagining something going wrong and the cut off connection severing her arm.

“Aha!” Flora’s hand came back, much to Link’s relief. She handed him a sheet of printer paper. “It’s from JJ, really.”

“Oh my god,” Link said. “This is fantastic.” JJ had very carefully drawn a stegosaurus, complete with plates down its back and a spiky thagomizer at the end of its tail. It was surrounded by lush greenery and JJ had signed it in the corner: Javier Martinez Jr Age 7. “He remembered this was my favorite?”

Flora nodded. “You made quite an impression on him. He asked if you could come over again.”

“Absolutely.” Link took the menu of Rhett’s favorite Chinese place off the fridge and hung the stegosaurus up in its place. “I have spin class on Tuesdays and Thursdays but that’s it.”

“I’ll send you a text,” Flora said. “And you better text me with any Rhett updates, understand?”

“Are you kidding?” Link asked in disbelief. “I can’t _wait_ to talk shit about him behind his back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe the Aaron Burr "Got Milk?" ad came out in 1993.


	20. Chapter 20

“Hey, Link.”

Link paused his audiobook and glanced around before realizing the intercom had materialized on the floor next to his chair. He pushed the button with his big toe. “Yeah?”

“Are you busy right now?”

“Uh…” Link looked at his puzzle. It was about two thirds done. “Not really.”

“Okay, good. I need help with something. Hang on, I’m coming down.”

Link managed to put one puzzle piece in place before Rhett appeared in the dining room. He was wearing typical Rhett garb, joggers and a satin robe. “What’s up?” Link asked.

“Well, Flo and I are ready to make a full size door prototype,” Rhett said. He took two puzzle pieces and fit them together. “But there’s kind of a window on my workbench.”

“Yeah, how’s that going?” Link asked. All the glass diamonds were in place, but if there had been any more progress, he couldn’t see it.

“Slowly,” Rhett admitted. “But I need to move it. My dad has a couple sawhorses and some plywood in his shed that he said I could borrow.”

“And you want me to help carry it?” Link guessed.

“Bingo.”

“Yeah, okay.” Link pushed back his chair and stood up. “Let me put on a different shirt.”

When Link came downstairs in an old hoodie, Rhett had swapped his robe for a jean jacket. Link headed towards the front door, but Rhett stopped him. “Wrong door,” he said, jerking his head towards the kitchen.

“The pantry door?” Link asked in confusion.

“Yeah, it goes to my parents’ garage.”

Link took a moment to let that sink in. “How can it go to Flora’s house _and_ your parents’ house?”

“Oh, it doesn’t go to Flo’s house,” Rhett said, as if it were obvious. “Her door comes to our house.”

“Okay, let me see if I have this right.” Link took a deep breath. “The pantry door can only go to your parents’ house or the pantry, unless Flora’s door is connected to it, right? Her door, like, overrides your door.”

“Close enough.”

“If Flora’s door was connected, could you go to your parents’ house?”

“Yeah, it’s a totally different mechanism,” Rhett said. “Here, I’ll show you. Feel on the top of the door frame.”

Link reached up and slid his fingers along until he felt something. “There’s a switch.”

“Flip it and open the door.”

Link did so. Nothing seemed to change, but when he opened the door, instead of the pantry or Flora’s office, there was the inside of a two car garage. There was a silver sedan parked in one spot, with the usual garage stuff along the wall: a rake, an ancient bicycle, a stepladder. Warm, stale air scented with exhaust wafted into the kitchen.

“So I’ve lived here for most of a year and it’s been like this the whole time?” Link asked in baffled astonishment. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Rhett shrugged. “It never came up.”

Link opened his mouth to ask another question, thought better of it, and just shook his head instead.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Where are we?” Link hissed to Rhett. They were sitting on the couch in Rhett’s parents’ living room while his mom went to get them some sweet tea. She had a pronounced Southern accent and the clock on the mantle was three hours ahead.

“Buies Creek, North Carolina,” Rhett whispered back. He noticed Link’s lost expression. “Outside Raleigh.”

“Okay, thanks.” Link sat up as Rhett’s mom came back with the tea. She was lovely and welcoming and very interested in Link. Where did he go to school, what did he do for fun, how did he like living in Rhett’s house, how did one get to be a personal assistant anyway? 

They were all questions Rhett had never really asked, and Link could tell that Rhett was embarrassed to be so ignorant in front of his mother. To be fair, he hadn’t asked that many questions of Rhett, but that was because Rhett didn’t seem to want that kind of relationship.

He was learning a lot about Rhett now, though. It was obvious Rhett’s mom was extremely proud of him, which she showed by telling Link several embarrassing stories. Rhett groaned and covered his face with his hands, but Link loved it. The visual of a fifteen year old Rhett breaking all the windows in his bedroom when a spell went wrong was just perfect.

“Is it common for magic to run in families like that?” Link asked half an hour later as they headed out to the shed. Rhett’s mom said that Rhett took after her father, who also had an interest in magic windows.

“It’s more cultural than genetic,” Rhett said. “Strong or weak magical ability can run in families, but unless there’s a family tradition of practicing magic, ability doesn’t really matter. My mom’s family were Mennonites and didn’t serve in combat roles during WWI and WWII, so they didn’t lose their traditions like a lot of other families did.”

“Huh.” Link watched as Rhett unlocked the shed and opened the big double doors. “Oh _no_. Rhett, you asshole.”

The shed was absolutely crammed with stuff. Yard tools, sports equipment, cardboard boxes, plastic tubs, and miscellaneous objects were piled up haphazardly. Link couldn’t even see any sawhorses.

“You’re getting paid for this,” Rhett reminded him.

Link heaved a sigh. “I _guess_. What should I be looking for?”

“The sawhorses are black plastic and they fold up. My dad said they were on the left side.”

Twenty minutes of cursing, junk Tetris, and arguing later, the two men had found and extracted the sawhorses and only had the sheet of plywood to go.

“Careful, it’s heavy,” Rhett warned as they lifted it over a pile of boxes of Christmas decorations.

“Yeah, I know,” Link muttered. As the slightly smaller member of the pair, he’d been the one to go deeper into the shed. The air inside was still and warm and Link was annoyed and overheated, even though he’d discarded his sweatshirt. He also had spiderwebs in his hair and was trying not to think about that too hard.

“We’re almost done.” Rhett supported the board as Link tried to carefully climb over the junk without dropping it. Link almost managed to get out of the shed without incident, but right as he reached the door, Link tripped and fell against the frame.

“Ah, fuck!” he hissed in pain as his arm scraped across the metal.

“You okay?” Rhett called from the other end of the plywood.

“Yeah, I think so.” They leaned the plywood against the side of the shed. Link looked down at his forearm, expecting to see a scrape. Instead, there was a long, deep cut that was bleeding freely. There was blood all over his shirt and jeans. “Oh,” Link said weakly as he crumpled onto the damp grass.

“Oh, shit, _shit_. Uh…” Rhett pulled off his t-shirt and wrapped it around Link’s arm. “Put some pressure on that, okay? I’ll be right back.” He ran off towards the house.

“Rhett…” Link called to his retreating back. Rhett didn’t acknowledge him. Link tried to keep pressure on his cut, but his head was swimming and he fought to stay conscious. Mostly he just stared up at the tiny spring green leaves sprouting from the branches of the tree above him and blue sky and fluffy clouds beyond them. He could feel the damp chill of the ground soaking into his shirt.

Link closed his eyes, and then Rhett was back with his mom in tow. Rhett grabbed Link under his arms and pulled him into a different place on the grass, ignoring Link’s mumbled protests and questions. He took Link’s injured arm and positioned it stretched out on the grass. “Keep it there, okay? My mom’s gonna fix it.”

“Wha…”

“Here.” Rhett took Link’s left hand and held it. His mom stood next to Link’s arm and began to speak.

“And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood,” she said, and stepped over Link’s arm. “Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou vast in thy blood, Live.”

Rhett squeezed Link’s hand. “You should be good now.” He stood and pulled a still-woozy Link into a standing position.

“Let’s get you inside and cleaned up, sweetie,” Rhett’s mom said. 

Link looked from her to Rhett and back. “What was that?”

“My mom’s a bloodstopper,” Rhett said, as if that explained everything.

“A what?”

“It’s a ritual for stopping bleeding. Look, honey.” Rhett’s mom pulled the bloody shirt from Link’s arm. “See?”

Link’s arm was still smeared with blood, but the cut itself had not only stopped bleeding, but it looked partially healed as well. He tried to take it in, but failed. “I need to sit down,” he said faintly, and started to crumple again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett’s mom told Link about bloodstopping as she cleaned up his arm. It was an old ritual, mainly practiced in remote communities like logging camps where there was limited access to medical care. Not everyone could be a bloodstopper--the only way to gain the ability was to receive it from another bloodstopper. Rhett’s mom got it from her uncle, and she passed it on to a cousin who had a son with hemophilia.

“I thought he needed it more than anyone,” she said.

“Yeah, probably,” Link agreed. “And it’s a Bible verse?”

She nodded. “Mmhm, Ezekiel 16:6.”

Link shook his head with a little laugh. “My old boss, Bernadette, would absolutely flip if she knew people were doing magic with Bible verses. She’s a super super devout Catholic.”

“There’s a _ton_ of magic based on the Bible,” Rhett said. “Bibliomancy is a very widespread field, and for a lot of people back in the day, the only book they had access to was the Bible. Most of it doesn’t work anymore.”

“Apparently, Ezekiel 16:6 used to heal wounds completely, without a scar,” Rhett’s mom added. “I’m afraid you’ll end up with one, though.”

“That’s okay,” Link said as she placed the last strip of tape over his gauze bandage. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sweetie.”

“C’mon, Link, let’s get you home.” Rhett helped Link off his chair, even though he didn’t really need help. His mom hugged them both goodbye.

“What about the sawhorses?” Link asked as they headed toward the garage.

Rhett dismissed them with a flick of his hand. “I’ll get Adam to help bring them over this evening.”

“I wish you’d tell me when he’s coming over,” Link said. Rhett opened the garage door and Link followed him into the kitchen of the pink house.

Rhett reached up and flipped the switch on the door frame. “Sorry, I’ll try to be better about that.”

“Thanks.” Link sighed and looked down at himself. He was covered in dirt, grime, and blood splatters. “I think this shirt is a goner.”

“Join the club!” Rhett said, holding out his arms. He had on his jean jacket with no shirt underneath, since he’d thrown it away at his parents’ house. “Personally, I think it’s a great look.”

“Absolutely, you should wear that next time you and Adam go out,” Link said. “It’s so bold and original.” The shirtlessness aside, Link always thought Rhett looked much nicer when he dressed like a real person and not a magic slob.

“Ah, Link, what would I do without you?” Rhett asked. He saw Link open his mouth to respond. “Don’t answer that!”

Link tried to zips his lips, but his giggles broke through, and soon they were laughing in the kitchen together.


	21. Chapter 21

Adam quickly became a regular visitor to the pink house. Link liked him, in a superficial way. Adam was funny and outgoing and didn’t take Rhett too seriously, which was good, but Rhett didn’t take _Adam_ seriously, which was bad. He also lied to Adam, telling him that Link was his roommate first before becoming his employee.

“He _really_ likes Rhett,” Link said to Flora one day about a month after Rhett and Adam became exclusive. It had become his custom to go have dinner with her family once a week or so. It got him out of the house and gave him an opportunity to gossip with no chance of Rhett overhearing.

“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” Flora said.

“Yeah, he likes Rhett, and Rhett likes him, but Rhett doesn’t like him for the right reason.”

“He likes Adam because he’s trying to break the curse, you mean?”

“Yeah! Like, if it wasn’t for that, Rhett would be perfectly happy to hide up in his lab all the time.”

Flora twirled the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. “Do you really think he was happy, though?”

“Uh…” Link blinked out at the backyard, where Javier was pushing both kids on a swing set, as he considered that. “I dunno. What do you think?”

“Well, I didn’t know him very well until we started working on this door thing together,” Flora said. “That’s why I asked you.”

“Oh.” Link took a sip of his wine. “I think he was lonely, and that’s why he wanted a live-in assistant.”

“I thought he wanted someone live-in so he could wake them up in the middle of the night to help him with… whatever it is he does in the middle of the night.”

“Last week it was because he bumped the sawhorse under his Escher window and he needed me to help put everything back in place,” Link said wearily. “It took me two hours to fall back asleep afterwards.”

Flora laughed. “He sounds almost as bad as Coco. She had a meltdown last night because she couldn’t find her stuffed goose. I finally found it at the bottom of her bed, under all the blankets.”

“Yeah, I solve problems like that all the time.” Link set his glass on the patio table. “But I don’t know what to do about Adam.”

“I don’t think you can do anything--” Flora noticed JJ yelling for her to watch him do a cartwheel. “That’s great, baby! You did such a good job.” She turned back to Link. “Sorry.”

“No, he did a good job.” Link gave JJ a thumbs up and got an enthusiastic response. “You think I should just let it be?”

“I don’t think you have a choice. What are you going to do, go up to Adam and say, ‘Hey, just so you know, Rhett has no interest in dating anyone, but he’s been cursed by his ex best friend that he’ll die unless he finds true love, and that’s why he’s going out with you’? Do you see that going well for anyone?”

“No, but it might save Adam some heartache. None of this is his fault.” Link sighed and stretched his legs out.

“Maybe they’ll fall in love,” Flora suggested hopefully.

“Maybe,” Link said doubtfully. “I know it hasn’t happened yet, ‘cause I saw them kiss and then Rhett immediately tripped over the rug.”

Flora snorted. “I feel so bad for laughing, but Aimee making him ‘suffer’ all this inconsequential stuff can be kind of funny sometimes.”

“Yeah, in a gallows humor kind of way.” Link sighed again. “I hate every part of this.”

“I know,” Flora said softly. “I hate it, too.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Hey, my mom asked how your arm was,” Rhett said as he came into Link’s office for one of his daily Link hassling sessions.

“I think that verse is stronger than she thinks, because it healed up _so_ fast.” Link pushed up the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “See? And if there’s a scar, it’s not gonna be much.”

“Wow.” Rhett fished his phone out of the pocket of his robe, which was Flora’s Princeton regalia, and took a picture of Link’s arm. “I don’t think she gets much chance to use it these days.”

Link thought about Rhett’s mom, a lady in her mid-seventies whose main hobbies seemed to be Bible study and playing canasta with people from Bible study. “Probably not, no.”

“I’m going over to Adam’s tonight,” Rhett said. “Probably gonna stay the night.”

“Okay. Thanks for letting me know.” Link hadn’t asked Rhett to inform him if he was going to be gone overnight, but apparently Rhett thought Link would worry if he didn’t come home. It was kind of sweet, and thoughtful in a way that Rhett didn’t usually act.

This was the point where Rhett usually wandered off to do his Rhett things, so Link turned back to his computer. Rhett didn’t leave, though, so Link turned back to look at him. Rhett was regarding him thoughtfully. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, why?”

Rhett shrugged. “You just seem kind of subdued, is all.”

“Oh.” Link drummed his fingers lightly on the desk. He decided to give Rhett the truth. “So, this morning when I came back from the grocery store, I saw the tulips coming up out front.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And that was the first thing I noticed the first time I came over here, that the tulips were the same color as the house. That got me thinking about everything that’s happened in the last year, and… I dunno.” Link didn’t know how to put his feelings into words. Nostalgia mixed with regret mixed with a longing for something that was gone and would probably never return.

“Has it really been a year?” Rhett asked in amazement.

“Just about.”

“Been a hell of a year.”

“Yeah.”

“We should celebrate,” Rhett said. “Go out to eat somewhere expensive or do something fun. Whatever you want.”

“Let me think about it,” said Link, who didn’t feel like celebrating at all.

“Sure, just let me know.” Rhett turned to leave, but turned back. “You’re a fantastic assistant, by the way. Better than I ever could have hoped.”

That got a smile out of Link, but it was a little bittersweet all the same.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link was almost finished with his second jigsaw puzzle, which was a row of painted lady Victorian houses, just like Rhett’s. It was a good puzzle, lots of different colors and textures, and not too many areas of wide, flat colors.

He set himself up with a bowl of giant green grapes and his current audiobook (Daphne du Maurier’s _Rebecca_ ) and lost himself in the reader’s smooth voice and the mindlessness of fitting together puzzle pieces and munching grapes.

Forty five minutes later, Link snapped in the final piece--a bit of blue sky. For a few seconds, he felt extremely accomplished, but then the futility of a completed puzzle washed over him. He burst into tears.

Link’s first reaction to his outburst was one of bewilderment. He’d been fine just a moment ago, working on his puzzle while he floated along on the calm tone of the audiobook--which, he realized, was still playing. Link paused it and pulled out his earbuds.

He wiped his eyes, but it was no use. The tears just kept coming. Link pushed his chair back from the dining room table and went into the living room, where he grabbed the box of tissues from the side table and collapsed on the couch.

All the stress and fear and uncertainty that had built up over the past six months burst forth in the form of full body sobs. Link curled up on the couch and cried and cried like he did when was a little boy.

“Link?”

Link shot upright. Rhett stood by the front door, closing it carefully behind him. He gave Link a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

Link ignored the question. His blotchy face and the pile of damp tissues on the table answered it for him. He grabbed another tissue and blew his nose noisily. “What happened to your date?”

“Adam’s mom called and said his kid fell down the stairs and probably broke her wrist, so he went to go get her,” Rhett said. “What’s wrong?”

Link burst into tears again.

“Oh, gosh.” Rhett glanced around the room as if he’d find something to help him. He sat next to Link and held out his arms. “Look, can I…?” 

Link nodded miserably, and Rhett pulled him into a hug. It was warm and solid and grounding, and Link immediately felt a little better. He let Rhett hold him and murmur soothing things until he’d cried himself out. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled into Rhett’s shoulder, which was damp with tears.

“Seriously, are you okay?” Rhett asked. Link shook his head. “Are you just having an especially shitty day, or…?”

Link sat up, which unfortunately caused Rhett to release him. “An especially shitty six months, more like,” he said as he wiped his face.

“Join the club, buddy,” Rhett said, not unkindly.

“I don’t know why I lost it like that,” Link said, mostly to himself. “I… I dunno. I didn’t know what to expect when I accepted an interview for this job. I mean, a magician with four previous failed assistants?” He managed a little laugh. “But I fell in love with the house, and I thought I could deal with you. And then…”

“Then what?” Rhett asked quietly.

Link didn’t look at him. “And then it turned out that I really liked you, and I really liked living here and working with you and Flora, but that fucking curse destroyed all of that. And it just really, really sucks, because I was actually happy for once, and then I feel like an asshole because I’m not even the one who's cursed, you know? But it’s still hurting me.” His eyes started watering again and he snatched another tissue out of the box.

Rhett sighed. He was still sitting next to Link, closer than he’d ever sat before. “I haven’t been a very good friend to you,” he said.

Link paused for a moment before wiping his nose. “You’re my employer.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t be your friend,” Rhett replied, neatly answering what Link didn’t say. “I’ve been thinking a lot recently, about what’s important.”

“I bet.”

“Yeah. I think I’m ready to talk to that lawyer now, by the way.”

The estate lawyer’s card had been on Link’s desk for over a month. “Okay, I’ll call her tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Rhett said. “See, this is what I mean when I say you’re a fantastic assistant. You’re always on top of everything, you get it done without complaining, and I never have to ask you twice about anything. Hell, you solve problems I didn’t even know I had.”

“Well, yeah…”

“But it’s not just that,” Rhett continued. “You’re smart and funny and yeah, you get on my nerves sometimes, but I really like having you around. If you weren’t here… I don’t think I could have gotten through the last six months.”

Link never knew how to respond to praise. “I mean… that’s what you hired me for.”

Rhett shook his head. “I hired you to run errands and deal with the finances, not have dinner with me or listen to my stupid jokes.”

“They’re not always stupid,” Link said. “Just most of them.”

The two men sat on the couch silently for a few moments, close enough to their shoulders to touch. Rhett broke the silence. “So you want to go out for dinner tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Link said. “I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rebecca is a gorgeous book, but it's kind of a downer.


	22. Chapter 22

A couple months passed. Rhett met with the estate lawyer a few times, and every time he’d come home and shut himself away in his room for the rest of the day. The first time this happened, Link tried calling him on the intercom and, when he got no answer, went and knocked on Rhett’s bedroom door, only to get a muffled, “Go away!”. Link left him alone after that.

He worried a lot about Rhett. The magician knew death was coming for him, down to the exact day. That had to weigh on a man, but Rhett wouldn’t talk to Link or Flora about it, and Adam had no idea.

Link knew the day, too. He didn’t have it on his calendar, but he knew it. It was only four months away. There were a few things scheduled for Rhett after that date, a routine dentist appointment, an oil change for his SUV, and Link dreaded having to cancel them.

He really thought he would have to cancel them, too, because the Rhett and Adam thing didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Adam wanted to go slow and make sure it was the real deal before introducing Rhett to his kid, which Link, who had grown close with a couple of his mom’s boyfriends growing up and been devastated when they vanished after breaking up, approved of. They were all hurtling towards heartbreak at a breakneck pace. There was no reason to include an eight year old in that.

Because Rhett could only visit Adam’s place while his kid was at her mother’s house every other weekend, Adam spent a lot of time at the pink house. His erratic schedule, which was largely based on repairing weather damaged towers, often led to him being there in the middle of the week during the day. This meant that he was occasionally at the house when Flora came over, so Rhett would kick him out of the lab and Adam would spend a few hours lounging around the living room.

Adam was starting to get on Link’s nerves. He referred to Flora as “Corporate Morticia Addams” at one point, which made Link snort (Flora laughed, too, when Link told her about it later), but also annoyed him because it wasn’t like Adam was friends with her. Link might have felt more charitable towards Adam if he didn’t make Link feel like such a third wheel in his own home.

“I wish they’d just break up,” Link said to Flora one day when Adam wasn’t there. “There’s no future there. Rhett’s not gonna fall in love with him.”

“You could break them up easily,” Flora pointed out. “Just tell Adam the truth.”

Link sighed. “Rhett would never forgive me.”

“Yeah,” Flora said. “Yeah.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link ended up being the catalyst of Rhett and Adam’s breakup completely by accident.

It happened one day in the kitchen, while Adam was hanging around because Rhett had kicked him out of the workroom while he had a business call with the investors. Link just wanted to try and fry an egg without breaking the yolk for once, but Adam wanted to chat. Link was only half listening to him when there was a beep and Rhett’s crackly voice came out of the intercom speaker.

“Hey, Link.”

Link grunted in annoyance and turned around. The speaker had materialized on the side of the cabinet behind him, out of Adam’s line of sight. Link pushed the button. “Yeah?”

“Do you remember the name of that woman in Detroit who works with mirrors?”

“The one who made my side view mirror?” Link asked.

“Yeah. I think it’s Michelle something?”

“No, it’s, um…” Link looked up at the ceiling. “Lachelle! Lachelle Powell.”

“Yes! That’s it. Thanks.” With that, Rhett was gone.

“I don’t know how you put up with that thing,” Adam said. “It would drive me crazy.”

Link turned back to his egg, which was now overcooked. “Crap.” He flipped it over carelessly. No need to worry about breaking that yolk. “We had a big argument about it when I first started, because it showed up in the bathroom when I was showering and Rhett would call me in the middle of the night when he lost track of time. But honestly, my last employer had daily visions of the Virgin Mary, so Rhett’s actually a lower level of weird for me.”

That gave Adam a moment of pause. “Like, the actual Virgin Mary?”

“Bernadette certainly thought so, but I never saw anything.” Link tipped his disappointing egg onto his BLA sandwich, turning it into a BELA (bacon, egg, lettuce, avocado). “I totally understand why Rhett had trouble keeping assistants before, though.”

“What do you mean, keeping assistants?” Adam asked.

Link suddenly remembered that Adam thought he’d been Rhett’s roommate first before starting to work for him. Rhett’s rationale was that he wasn’t an especially busy or famous person, so having a personal assistant would make him come off as being high maintenance (which he was). 

He paused with his spatula over the sandwich. “Uh, you know. Hiring someone to do the finances and run errands and schedule things. You know, the stuff I do now.” Link glanced over at Adam.

Adam frowned. “But you live here.”

“Yep. I’m his housemate, too.” Link chopped his sandwich in half with a crunch. He didn’t feel as hungry as he did a few minutes ago, though. Hopefully Adam wouldn’t connect the dots. 

Adam immediately connected the dots. “So which happened first? Assistant, or housemate?”

Link’s stomach dropped. He’d just outed himself and Rhett, completely by accident. “Um…”

“Jesus,” Adam said. Link couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or betrayed or both. “That’s… he hired you to _live_ with him? Why?”

“Honestly, you’d have to ask him.” Link looked down at his sandwich. He didn’t think he could eat it. His stomach was tight with guilt.

“And you _agreed_?”

Link sighed. “Almost all of my jobs have been live in. I lived with Bernadette--the one with the visions--for six years, and before her I lived with that employer for three years.”

“That’s fucking weird, dude.”

“Oh, I know,” Link said. “I know.”

Adam shook his head in disbelief. “I gotta talk to Rhett.” He turned and walked out of the kitchen.

Link shoved his plate away and dropped his head into his hands. “Damn it.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link spent the rest of the afternoon in his office with the door closed and his stomach in knots. He tried to work, but ended up endlessly scrolling through Instagram instead, just waiting until 3pm when Adam would leave to pick his kid up from school.

At 3:12pm, there came a knock on the door. Link dropped his phone, even though he’d been expecting the knock. “Come in,” he said as he bent over to pick up his phone.

The door opened to reveal Rhett. He held up the plate with Link’s BELA sandwich on it. “Are you going to eat this?”

Link shook his head, so Rhett took a bite. “Pretty good,” he mumbled through a full mouth. “Egg’s a little overdone, though.”

“Yeah, I know.” Link licked his lips. “So, uh, Adam?”

“Oh, yeah.” Rhett put the half eaten sandwich back on the plate. “He asked what the hell I needed a servant for.”

“I’m not a servant,” Link said.

“Duh. That’s what I told him.” Rhett picked the sandwich back up. “And he was like, ‘Well, if he’s not a servant, why do I see Link doing chores all the time?’ and I said, ‘Because he wants to live in a clean house and anyway, he likes cleaning because he’s weird’.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“What? You do.” Rhett shrugged and took a bite. “Anyway, I told him that if he was okay with you being my roommate before you were my assistant, he should be okay with you being my assistant first, because there’s really no difference.”

“Was he upset?” Link asked. 

“Yeah.” Rhett wiped his fingers on his sweatpants. “But not, like, super mad. I think he just needs a little time to get used to the idea.”

“Oh.” Link fiddled with his phone. “I’m really sorry about that, by the way.”

“It’s okay. It was bound to come out sometime.” Rhett held out the empty plate. “Can you take care of this for me?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, ‘cause I’m not your servant,” Link said.

A laugh burst out of Rhett. “Ha! You got me there.” He turned and headed toward the stairs, but turned back. “I’m not upset with you, okay? Try not to feel too bad about it.”

“Okay.” Rhett’s words helped a little, but Link still felt anxious and guilty. All he could do was hope that it would fade with time.


	23. Chapter 23

After that, Link avoided Adam as much as possible. He spent a lot of time in his bedroom and in his office with the door closed. Adam seemed to share his feelings, as he never came and talked with Link anymore.

Meanwhile, Rhett’s imminent demise loomed over Link, casting a shadow over his entire life. Rhett made Link the executor of his estate, and Link was keenly aware of the sealed folder of legal information in his filing cabinet. In less than three months, unless something miraculous happened, Rhett would be gone and Link would have to open it.

Link became more and more anxious, and he cried a lot when he was alone in his room. He couldn’t talk to Rhett about it, because Rhett never brought it up. Instead, he talked to Flora. He was deeply, deeply grateful to Flora for being so patient and kind, but of course she was in the same boat.

“Is he still trying to be a better friend to you?” she asked as they sat at her kitchen table one night.

“Yeah, we go out and do stuff sometimes. See a movie, try a new restaurant, that sort of thing. It feels shallow, though, like he’s just doing it because he thinks he should?” Link sighed. “We’re not gonna become better friends like this. I can tell his mind is elsewhere.”

“So’s yours,” Flora pointed out. “And, honestly, mine as well.”

“Huh.” It had never occurred to Link that his failure to connect with Rhett might go both ways. “It’s an exercise in futility, anyway.”

“Yeah.” Flora looked utterly defeated. “I think we have to start actually talking about it.”

“But that makes it real,” Link said miserably.

“It’s _been_ real.”

“I know,” Link said. “I know.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Two and a half months left to go.

Link took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was trying to reconcile his spreadsheet with the bank statement, and it just wasn’t matching up. There was a stupid mistake in there, but he couldn’t find it. Time to get up for a piss break followed by a walk around the block. Maybe he’d have better luck with a fresh mind and an empty bladder.

He got up from his desk and stretched before going over to the magic door and opening it. Link turned towards his bathroom and nearly walked into the blank wall where a door should have been.

Link blinked at the smooth cream wall, completely confused until he realized that he’d accidentally gone into Rhett’s hallway. “Dumbass,” he muttered to himself as he turned back to the magic door.

As he reached for the milk glass doorknob, Link paused. He could hear voices floating down the stairs from the workroom. It was Rhett and Adam. (Link was secretly envious that Adam, with his moderate magical ability, could see the ley line grid without any help.)

Link walked over to the base of the stairs. If it had been anyone but Adam, he never would have eavesdropped, but this was a special circumstance. This conversation might have serious effects on his life.

He listened closely. Rhett said something about a compensation package. It was a conversation about… money? Employment? But for whom? Link climbed up a couple stairs and crouched down.

“... don’t understand why he has to live here!” That was Adam, sounding annoyed and frustrated. “He could just come in daily, like a regular job!”

Lin’s eyes widened. They were talking about him.

“Adam, we’ve talked about this.” That was Rhett, sounding tired and resigned. “He lives here because I want him to.”

Adam spluttered. “But _why_? You never have an answer for that!”

“I just do.” Link imagined Rhett’s shrug.

“So it boils down to, ‘Because I said so?’” There was a touch of outrage in Adam’s voice.

“If you want to see it that way, sure.”

“So if I said it was him or me, who would you choose?”

A sigh from Rhett. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

A long moment of silence. Link didn’t know Adam well enough to guess his expression, but the disgust in his voice said it all. “I can’t believe you, Rhett.”

“Believe it,” Rhett said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“Well, if you’re willing to die on this hill, go ahead, because _I_ can go somewhere. ” Link heard footsteps coming towards the stairs. He quickly and quietly made his way to the hallway door and slipped out. Once he was safely back in his office, he closed the door and leaned against it, heart racing.

What did all that mean? Was Rhett breaking up with Adam? Or maybe Adam would break up with Rhett. There was really no way to be sure from such a small snippet of conversation, but Link thought he’d heard the beginning of the end.

So where did that leave them? Rhett probably couldn’t find true love in two and a half months. Of course, it was highly unlikely that Adam was his true love, so if he and Rhett broke up, it didn’t really change anything. It still felt like a spark of hope had been extinguished.

Link sank to the floor and dropped his head into his hands.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link’s alarm rang. He reached over and hit snooze. 

Fifty eight days to go.

He felt awful.

Adam hadn’t visited the pink house since the day he and Rhett had their argument about Link, but Link knew that Rhett was still talking to him. Even though Rhett told him not to worry about what happened, Link still felt guilty.

Along with his baseline state of perpetual, anxious dread, Link also had a sore throat and a splitting sinus headache. The little tickle in his throat that he’d noticed yesterday hadn’t gone away like he’d hoped. He decided to take the day off and turned off his alarm before it could ring again.

Link woke a few hours later to the sound of Rhett calling him on the intercom. It was after 10am, and his room was full of warm morning sunlight. Link closed his eyes against the light and reached above his head to blindly grope for the intercom.

“Yeah?” he croaked.

“Where are you? I’m in your office and you… aren’t.”

“In bed. I’m sick.”

“Oh.” The crackly noise of the intercom stopped. Link began to drift off, but was jolted awake when Rhett’s voice came back. “Can I get you anything?”

Link stared up at the white beadboard ceiling as he thought. He reached back up and pushed the button. “Some DayQuil?”

“You got it.” Link could hear the echo of a smile in Rhett’s voice. He smiled a little, too, and pulled the blanket over his head.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Hey, Link.”

The intercom again. Link checked the clock. Half an hour had passed. “Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah.”

Link heard the hallway door open and close. There was a soft knock on his door and then Rhett opened it quietly. Link gave him a weak little wave. “Hi.”

“You look like shit,” Rhett said. He handed Link a plastic cup with a straw “It’s decaf.”

Link took a sip of the vanilla latte. The cold liquid felt wonderful. “Are you apologizing for something?”

“Sorry you’re sick, I guess,” Rhett replied with a smirk. “I got you some other stuff, too.” He held up a plastic bag and listed off objects as he put them on Link’s bedside table. “Tissue, DayQuil, water, cough drops, chicken soup.”

Link laughed hoarsely. The chicken soup was still in the can. “Thanks, Rhett.”

“And one more thing.” Rhett reached into the pocket of his green satin robe and handed a small paper bundle to Link.

Link carefully unwrapped the tissue paper. It was a pendant hanging from a chain of alternating steel and copper links. The pendant itself was a brass disk with an inlaid grid of copper and steel wires. “What’s this?”

“That is a Richardson’s electrogalvanic amulet against sickness,” Rhett said. 

“Does it work?” Link put on the necklace. The chain was just long enough to go over his head.

“Probably never did, honestly,” Rhett replied. “Electrogalvanism was a pseudomagical belief that arose in the latter half of the nineteenth century. There were a lot of people trying to use new scientific discoveries in magic and almost none of them succeeded.

“Huh.” Link opened the DayQuil box and got out two pills. “Is ‘pseduomagical’ like the opposite of ‘pseudoscientific’?”

“Pretty much. Even if it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt.” Rhett sat on the edge of the bed, next to Link’s feet. “So, um, I broke up with Adam this morning.”

“Because of me?” Link asked.

“No!” Rhett shook his head. “I mean, maybe that was the last straw, but it had been a long time coming.”

“Oh.” That was about what Link had expected. He took the pills with a swallow of latte.

“There was the whole ‘ex and kid’ thing, and his weird schedule, and I just think, if he’d been the one… it would have happened already.” Rhett sagged at the end of the bed. Link had never seen him look so defeated.

“I’m so sorry, Rhett.”

“I’ve known for a long time I wasn’t going to break the curse,” Rhett said, voice breaking. “Maybe from the very beginning.”

Link’s eyes began to fill with tears. “Oh, Rhett…”

“And I know you’re wondering what’s going to happen to you, afterwards. I saw you had your resume up on the computer, so I just want you to know that you’re not going to have to worry about money or moving for a while.” Rhett rested his head on the post at the end of the bed.

“C’mere.” Link whacked the mattress next to him. “Sit with me for a while.”

Rhett kicked off his Vans and scooted up to the head of the bed. Link took his hand, which was covered in little scars from the last ten months of inconvenient suffering--burns, cuts, and scrapes. There was a neon yellow bandage wrapped around his thumb. “Do you have a bucket list?”

“No.”

“Might be time to make one.” Link sighed and rested his head on Rhett’s shoulder. “I’m gonna miss you so much.”

Rhett just squeezed his hand and didn’t say anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Richardson's electrogalvanic amulets are an actual thing: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co139806/electrogalvanic-amulet-therapeutic-amulets


	24. Chapter 24

Fifty four days to go.

Link was mostly over his cold. He had a bit of a lingering cough, but otherwise he was back to normal. Rhett seemed to have escaped catching it, which was a little surprising, given the curse.

The first thing Rhett wanted to do with the time he had left was a trip to Scotland with his parents, and he also wanted Link to come along.

“Are you sure?” Link asked.

“You’ve been here since it started,” Rhett replied. “And you said you’d be here until the end, so you might as well be here throughout the whole middle. Anyway, I need you to keep track of itineraries and reservations and stuff.”

Link leaned back in his office chair and crossed his arms, waiting.

“Oh, right,” Rhett said. “You’re my friend and I like spending time with you. Also you’ve been working really hard and deserve a break.”

“There you go.” Link nodded in satisfaction and turned back to his computer. “Are you totally set on that AirBnB by the lake? They won’t return my messages.”

“The loch,” Rhett corrected.

“Sorry. They won’t return my lochs.”

Rhett snorted. “Nah, fuck ‘em. I just want something with a good view where my mom won’t have to climb too many stairs.”

“Okay.” Link scrolled through a few listings. “I’ll email you a couple.”

“Thanks,” Rhett said. “So, um, I’m almost done with the Escher window. Wanna come up and see it activate?”

“Yeah!” Link loved seeing Rhett’s projects in action. He pushed his chair back from his desk. “Lemme get my makeup on.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

At some point since the last time Link had been in the lab, the Escher window and the prototype door had switched places. Link took his place at the long table, across from Rhett.

Rhett handed him the Ivanov resonator. “Here, take a look.” Link peered through the tines of the brass tuning fork. Each glass tile pulsed with energy, some fast, some slow.

“They’re like little heartbeats,” he said.

“I guess you could say it like that.” Rhett reached into his robe pocket and held up a round, light brown object. 

“Is that an egg?” Link asked.

“Yeah.”

“How long has it been in your pocket?”

“Just a few hours.” Rhett held the egg high in the air above the window. “Ready?”

“For what?”

“Watch the window.” Rhett waited until Link had the resonator back up to his eye before letting go of the egg. Link yelped, expecting to get splattered, but the egg vanished into the window like it had been dropped into water. The energy pulses above each glass tile sloshed and rippled. As Link watched, they coalesced into one single pulse over the entire window.

When everything had settled into its new movement, Link looked up at Rhett, who was watching him with a smile. “So what do you think of that?”

“Pretty cool.” Link put down the Ivanov resonator. The diamond shapes of the tiles were already beginning to soften as they began their transition. “Where did the egg go?”

“It was transmuted into energy,” Rhett said with a mystical wave of his fingers. “It’ll work with anything organic. I just like using eggs.”

Link put a finger on the solder barrier between two tiles. He could feel it moving, which was unsettling. “Where are you going to put it?”

“The dining room, maybe. It would stop the old lady next door from looking at us when she washes her dishes.”

“It would probably be more interesting than watching me do a puzzle,” Link said. The tiles were now an hourglass shape. “Can I have it?”

“You want me to hang it up in your room?” Rhett asked. “Sure.”

“Yeah, but… later, too.” Link fiddled with the resonator. “When I leave.”

“You can have them all,” Rhett said. “You can have whatever you want.”

That wasn’t true, because what Link really wanted was to stay in the pink house with Rhett.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Here, is this scenic enough for you?” Link turned his laptop towards Rhett so he could see the AirBnB listing. Soft brown mountains rose behind rolling green fields. “The house is cool, too. It’s a converted chapel.”

Rhett reached over and clicked through a few pictures. “Looks good to me.”

“Awesome.” Link pivoted the laptop back to himself and began the booking. “Did you call your dad?”

“Nope.”

“Would you like _me_ to call him?” Link knew that Rhett was trying to avoid some conversation with his dad, although he didn’t know what it was. He was going to have to make sure that it happened before they went to Scotland, though. Link didn’t want to spend the entire trip as an uncomfortable outsider to family drama.

Someone had to get Rhett’s dad’s passport information, though.

“Yeah, that’d be great.” Rhett didn’t sound like that would be great. Link looked at him out of the corner of his eye. Rhett was on his phone, switching from Twitter to Instagram and back again. Link could see exactly what he was doing because they were sitting next to each other on the couch, close enough for their shoulders to touch. He was pretty sure that Rhett wasn’t actually taking any of it in.

“Okay, that’s done.” Link finished with AirBnB and put his laptop away on the coffee table. “Do you wanna maybe go do something?” Anything to get Rhett off the couch and out of whatever funk he was in.

“LIke what?” Rhett asked, not looking up.

“Uh…” Link didn’t really have anything in mind. He thought back to his conversation with Flora about how he and Rhett were spending more time together, but weren’t really becoming better friends because of the curse looming over them. He thought about about Adam called their living arrangement “fucking weird” and how Rhett’s immediate reaction was to tell him that Link wasn’t going anywhere. He thought about how he still had Rhett’s indigo kimono draped over his office chair upstairs and the electrogalvanic amulet on his bedside table. “Hey, look at me for a second.”

“Hm?” Rhett turned his head, and Link leaned forward and kissed him.

It was not a good kiss. Even Link, who’d never been particularly into kissing, could tell. The angle was all wrong--his glasses got knocked askew as their noses smushed together--and his lips only partially landed on Rhett’s, which were dry and chapped. Rhett’s beard was softer than he would have expected, though.

Link pulled back, heart pounding, and stared wide-eyed at Rhett. Half of his mind was screaming _YES_ and the other half was screaming _NO_ and he had no idea how Rhett was going to react.

Rhett stared back, equally wide-eyed. They were both frozen for a moment. Rhett broke the silence. “Link, wha--” 

His words were cut off by a cough. Rhett tried to clear his throat, but he coughed again and again, harder each time. Link reached out hesitantly, ready to whack his back, but pulled back when Rhett made a horrible retching noise and spat something onto the floor.

Whatever it was made a disgusting _splat_ , but Link couldn’t see anything. Apparently Rhett could, though, because he was staring at the floor in fascinated disgust.

“Wha… what was that?” Link whispered.

Rhett turned around and Link gasped. He was the same Rhett as he had been a minute ago, but where that Rhett had been pinched with worry and gray with grief, with dull hair and eyes and a flat affect, this Rhett glowed with life. His eyes were bright green and his hair shone. His cheeks were pink and the stress lines that had dominated his face over the past ten months were gone, replaced with crinkled crows’ feet and smile lines.

Link realized what happened.

The curse was broken.

“Oh shit,” he whispered before he launched himself off the couch and ran up to his room.


	25. Chapter 25

Link pulled the hallway door shut behind him. “ _Please_ don’t let him in,” he begged it. He didn’t actually know if Rhett could enter his hallway uninvited. Link assumed he could. It was Rhett’s house, after all.

The first thing he did once he was safe in his bedroom was to collapse on the bed and scream into a pillow. That done, Link rolled onto his side and stared off into space. He had no coherent thoughts, just swirls of emotion hyped up on adrenaline. Relief and jubilation that the curse was broken, amazement that _he’d_ been the one to do it, panic at the implications of that, apprehension about how Rhett would react, fear that Aimee would find out and send a new curse.

Link decided he needed outside council. He fished his phone out of his pocket and called Flora.

She picked up right away. “Hey, I can only talk for a minute. What’s up?”

“So… the curse is broken,” Link said.

Flora gasped. “ _Really_?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god, Link, that’s fantastic!” There was a mumble from a male voice in the background. There was a rustle as Flora covered her phone, and then she came back. “Javier says that’s awesome.”

“Thanks,” Link replied automatically. 

“So how did it get broken?” Flora asked. “Did he get back with Adam or something? I can’t imagine that working, but…”

“No,” Link said. “I kissed him.”

There was a pause long enough that he thought the call had been dropped. “Hello?”

“No, I’m just thinking...” Flora said. “I can see how that would work. _Huh_.”

“What am I gonna _do_?” Link wailed.

“I dunno, but _I_ am about to go see a play. My in-laws have graciously offered to babysit overnight and this is the first time we’ve been on a date since Coco was born,” Flora said. “Look, this is not a bad problem to ha--hang on, I’m getting another call.”

“Probably Rhett,” Link muttered morosely.

Flora came back. “It was Rhett. I sent him to voicemail.” Another mumble from Javier in the background. “I gotta go.”

“But--”

“Bye, Link. And congrats.” With that, Flora was gone.

Link dropped the phone onto the mattress and screamed into his pillow again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

No sooner had he lifted his face from the pillow when Link heard the telltale crackle on the intercom.

“Hey, Link,” came Rhett’s voice from the wall behind him. “So, um, I had absolutely no idea you were in love with me.”

 _Me neither_ , Link thought.

“I’m not upset about it,” Rhett continued, “although I do kind of wonder why you never--well, nevermind. It’s done now. Anyway, you saved my life, and I just want you to know that I really, _really_ appreciate it. Like, more than I can ever say. And I’m really glad it was you.”

Link frowned a little at that. Was Rhett into him? If so, Link had totally missed the signs.

“I’m going over to my parents’ tonight and you’re totally invited, but I’d understand if you need some time by yourself,” Rhett said. “Just let me know if you want to come. Otherwise I’ll be back tomorrow.”

The intercom crackle lingered a little longer as Rhett waited for a response, but Link was absolutely not going anywhere until he had some things figured out for himself. He did have one question that he needed outside help with, though. Link searched through his email until he found a number he’d never actually called before.

“Tulsa Nursery, this is Tyler.”

“Tyler!” Link said. “This is Link Neal. Um, with the curse…”

“Link!” All the smooth customer service tones dropped out of Tyler’s voice. “I was just thinking about y’all the other day. How’s it going?”

“Well, the curse is broken,” Link said.

“No shit! How’d that happen? Tinder finally pay off for Rhett?”

“No, I kissed him.” There was a long pause, the same as when Link told Flora. “Hello?”

“I’m just wondering what changed, is all,” Tyler said.

“What do you mean, ‘changed’?” Link asked.

“From the first time you kissed to now,” Tyler explained, as if it were obvious.

“I never kissed Rhett before!” Even to himself, Link sounded a little hysterical.

“Really? I figured that would be, like, one of the first things you tried.”

Link closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Tyler, I really need to know why you think I would have kissed my boss.”

“Y’all just seemed into each other,” Tyler said. “I would have thought you were a couple if Flora hadn’t said you were his assistant.”

“Oh.” Link felt utterly, utterly lost. Apparently his perception of his relationship with Rhett was completely different than what his _actual_ relationship was, and he had no idea how to reconcile them. “Okay, anyway. Do you think Aimee knows the curse was broken?”

“Yeah, there was some kind of reporting mechanism in there,” Tyler said. “I don’t remember what, exactly, but I could take another look if you wanted.”

“So there’s a connection between her and the watch box? Like, that could maybe be used to find out where she is?”

“Oh, shit! You better call the police, Link. I can come out if they need me, but it takes about two hours to drive to the door in Joplin, so you’ll have to let me know ASAP.”

“What do you mean, ‘the door in Joplin’?” Link asked.

“We aren’t all lucky enough to have magic doors in our house,” Tyler said. “The closest magic door to Tulsa is in Joplin, Missouri. It’s kind of weird, because it went between two houses on either side of town, but one of them was destroyed in the 2011 tornado so now it doesn’t go anywhere unless Flora hooks her door up to it.”

Link groaned and rubbed his face. He didn’t want to deal with the police or coordinating magic doors or anything useful like that. He wanted to get very, very drunk and pass out. “I’ll let you know, okay?”

“Great!” Tyler said. “Man, that must be a weight off your mind.” 

“You know what?” Link considered his current situation to where’d been less than an hour ago. As awkward and confusing as it was, he really would rather try to figure out if he was in love with Rhett than have to bury Rhett. “It really is.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link stared at the ceiling for a while before calling the detective who’d been working on the curse. She assured him, through snaps of her gum, that they already have a tracer on the watch box, and that it would allow them to find Aimee with pinpoint accuracy. “We’re not about to Carmen San Diego this bitch all over the globe, you know?”

That didn’t answer most of Link’s questions, like, “What happens if she’s in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US?”, but he decided Rhett could figure that out later.

There was only one task for Link to do before he was free for the evening. He texted Tyler that he didn’t need to come before getting out of bed and turning his back to the wall in an attempt to summon the intercom. When he turned back around, the blank wall confirmed that Rhett was out of the house and out of range.

Time to get drunk. Link drove himself to the grocery store, where he picked up some Mexican Cokes, a bottle of Captain Morgan, the fanciest, most expensive frozen pizza he could find, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake for good measure. He was pretty sure the cashier had him pegged as a sad breakup guy, which wasn’t completely wrong.

Link got the pizza in the oven and made himself a drink. He hopped up on the counter to wait for his pizza, purely because Rhett wasn’t around to tell him to get off. Link gazed around the kitchen as he took a sip of his rum and Coke. His gaze landed on Rhett’s fancy cappuccino machine and he frowned.

Rhett could, and did, make just about any kind of coffee (or tea or hot chocolate) drink at home. They were good, too. But every time Rhett wanted to apologize to Link, or reward him, or suck up to him, he went to the coffee shop with the big aquarium and bought an iced vanilla latte instead of making one at home. To be fair, the latte was usually accompanied by a pastry, but Link suspected that was an afterthought.

He pondered the implications of the latte as he sipped his drink. Was “true love” something that had to go both ways, or could it be unrequited? If it _did_ have to go both ways (which Link suspected, since Aimee was a major Disney fan), did that mean Rhett loved him? If so, apparently Rhett had little to no idea that he loved Link, based on what he said over the intercom.

But what _was_ love? Link picked up the bottle next to him and made another drink. It was something he’d long wondered. He’d realized, somewhere between high school and college, that he wasn’t a late bloomer like his mama said he was--he just didn’t have whatever it was that made people fall in love.

He tried, of course. There had been a couple people who liked him enough to initiate things, and Link had been happy enough to go along with it--the dates were fun and he liked having someone to spend time with. Eventually, though, his partners realized that Link couldn’t give them what they wanted, and his relationships dissolved.

And then there was sex. Sex was… okay. Link enjoyed some parts of it, but for the most part, he thought it was just bodies smushing together in awkward ways. He much preferred the companionable kind of intimacy, hugs and snuggling on the sofa and sharing a bed. He wouldn’t mind doing that sort of thing with Rhett, not one little bit.

An unsettling thought struck Link. Would Rhett want to have sex with him? Link froze for a moment and shuddered. Nope, no way, not thinking about that right now. 

He grabbed the bottle of rum.


	26. Chapter 26

Link awoke to someone gently shaking his shoulder. “Hhng?” he mumbled.

“Link.” 

He opened an eye cautiously. In the foreground, he saw his half-eaten pizza and a couple bottles. In the background, the baseball announcers were discussing the game on the postgame show, so some time must have gone by since he passed out.

And looming above it all was Rhett, leaning over with a concerned expression on his face.

Link squinted up at him from his place on the couch cushion. “You’re not s’pposed to be here,” he slurred accusingly.

“I came back to get those travel papers,” Rhett said. “Seriously, are you okay?”

Link considered that. He was still wildly confused about his feelings towards Rhett, and he was still extremely drunk. “I dunno.”

Rhett sighed. “C’mon, let’s get you to bed.” He carefully helped Link sit up, which made Link’s head swim so much he couldn’t stand. Rhett got Link a glass of water and sat with him until he finished it.

Link swallowed the last gulp of water and slammed the cup down on the table. “Yeah!” 

Rhett laughed. “You ready now?”

“Mmmmyeah.” 

He was not ready. Rhett more or less hauled Link up the stairs and down the hall to his bedroom before depositing him on the mattress, where Link immediately toppled over. He regarded Rhett through heavy lidded eyes. “Y’know what?”

“What?” Rhett asked. He grabbed Link’s ankles and lifted his legs onto the bed.

“You’re a good. Um. A good fri--hey, don’t take my phone!” Link feebly tried to grab Rhett’s hand as Rhett took his phone out of his pocket. “I need that!”

“You need it to be charged,” Rhett said as he plugged it in and put it on Link’s bedside table. “See?”

“Oh.” Link closed his eyes. It was nice, having Rhett take care of him, for a change. Usually it was the other way around. “I like you.”

“I like you, too,” Rhett said. “But we’re gonna talk about this tomorrow.”

“‘Kay.” Link started to drift off, but right before he completely slid into unconsciousness, he felt the prickle of Rhett’s beard and the ghost of his lips as Rhett kissed his cheek.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link woke up, and immediately wished he hadn’t. He regretted every decision he’d ever made that led to him lying on top of his neatly made bed, fully clothed, with the worst hangover he’d had in ages. 

“Never again,” he mumbled as he rolled onto his back and draped an arm over his eyes. The morning light streaming through the window was far too bright. “I mean it this time.” He rolled back over to grab his phone and noticed that there was a bottle of water and a bottle of ibuprofen on his bedside table.

Drunk Link didn’t usually have the foresight to do anything helpful for Hungover Link, so Rhett must have placed them there. Maybe, Link thought as he cautiously sat up, he did love Rhett after all.

An hour later, after lots of water, a few ibuprofen, a very long, very hot shower, a shave, and clean clothes, Link felt more like a functional human. He still looked like hell, but there was nothing to be done for that.

Time for caffeine. Link made himself a couple espresso shots and wondered why his coffees were never quite as good as Rhett’s. There was some kind of magical mechanism in the cappuccino machine, but Link never remembered to ask about it.

Rhett had also put Link’s leftover pizza in the fridge and cleaned up the mess in the living room, which made Link feel both very grateful and incredibly embarrassed about last night. He prided himself on being competent and reliable--it was kind of his thing--and passing out on the couch was about the least competent and reliable thing a person could do.

Link had settled himself at the dining room table (his finished puzzle still covered half of it) with a couple pieces of cold pizza when the pantry door opened. Rhett entered the kitchen, carrying a tote bag, and reached up to flip the switch above the door. He caught sight of Link through the kitchen door. “You look a lot better than I thought you would,” he said.

“I look better than I feel,” Link admitted. “How was your visit?”

Rhett blew out a breath and sat heavily in the chair opposite him. “It was… emotional. My dad cried. He’s always been really quiet and reserved. I’ve never seen him cry before, even when my grandparents died, but he cried last night.”

“And your mom?” Link took a bite of pizza.

Rhett shook his head with a smile. “She cried too, and kept calling me her baby boy and wouldn’t let me go.”

“Sounds like a mom reaction,” Link said. “I have a question about that door.” He pointed his pizza at the pantry.

“Uh, okay.”

“If you were at your parents’ house, and I flipped the switch, what would happen?”

Rhett raised an eyebrow. “I’d buy a plane ticket back here and fire your ass, so don’t get any ideas.”

“Don’t worry, I was just curious.” Link kept eating his pizza, expecting Rhett to go do something more interesting, but the taller man just sat there, watching him. “What?”

“Why did you kiss me? Rhett asked.

Link made a face. He didn’t really want to have this conversation while hungover, but it was probably better to get it over with. “I dunno. You were dying, and I thought about all the nice things you’ve done for me, and how much I like living here with you, and working with you, and how much I’d miss you…” He began pulling his pizza crust apart into little shreds. “It seemed like a long shot, but I had to try.”

“Hm.” Rhett considered that thoughtfully. “So why’d you freak out, if it worked out like you wanted?”

Link squished a few crust scraps flat with his thumb. “‘Cause I didn’t know I was in love with you.”

“What?” Rhett asked incredulously.

“I didn’t know I was in love with you!” Link repeated, a little louder this time. His head hurt and he wanted to go back to bed.

“How could you not know--”

“And I didn’t know you were in love with me,” Link interrupted, staring down at his plate.

Rhett was silent for a few long moments. “Okay, this is going to sound really mean,” he said, “but why would you think I was in love with you?”

“Because Aimee’s a Disney fangirl,” Link said miserably. “You really think she’d accept unrequited love?” He glanced up to see Rhett with an absolutely gobsmacked look on his face.

Rhett opened and closed his mouth a few times. “Oh,” he whispered finally.

“Yeah,” Link pushed his plate away and grabbed his water glass. “I’m going back to bed,” he said, leaving an astonished Rhett alone at the table.


	27. Chapter 27

Link felt a lot better a few hours later, at least physically, and he couldn’t hide from Rhett forever. He also had work to do, so he snuck across the hall and shut his office door behind him. There were a few moments where he could see a shadow pass by the gap at the bottom of the door, but Rhett never knocked.

He took careful note of which way the shadow moved. When he saw Rhett head to his workroom, Link slipped out of his office and went downstairs to make himself a snack. He was in the living room, eating an apple and reading the news on his laptop, when Rhett appeared in the dining room. “Hey.”

Link jumped. “What the _fuck_ ,” he spluttered. “Are you teleporting or something?”

“Nah, I came down the stairs.” Link opened his mouth to exclaim that Rhett most certainly had _not_ come down the stairs, when Rhett surprised him by saying, “So, is this something you’re interested in?”

Link eyed him suspiciously. He had an idea of what “this” was, but he wanted to make Rhett say it. “This?”

Rhett sighed and flopped onto the couch. He was dressed in full slob magician regalia, the gauzy white robe with stars on it, plaid pajama pants, and a faded t-shirt. Link smiled a little. Rhett might look better in regular clothes, but he was more himself in comfy clothes and a robe.

“This.” Rhett gestured vaguely between. “Being, um, an item.”

Link snorted at Rhett’s choice of words. He shook his head. “An item.”

“Well, what would _you_ call it?”

Rhett had a point. Whatever they were, and whatever they were going to be, was so nebulous that anything more specific would be inaccurate. Link took a bite of his apple and chewed as he thought.

“What if we try and it goes bad?” he asked after swallowing. 

“What if it doesn’t?” Rhett countered.

“I’m just scared,” Link said. _Scared because I don’t fall in love, scared because I’m not going to be able to give you what you need._ “What about you?”

“I want to try,” Rhett said simply. “I thought a lot about what you said, how the kiss wouldn’t work if I didn’t love you, and how lucky I was to find someone who can run my business and be my friend _and_ put up with my shit. I really like you, and it just seems like a waste of true love if we don’t try.”

Link blinked in surprise a few times. “Oh.”

“Plus, you’re really hot.”

“I’m _what_?” Link couldn’t believe his ears.

“Oh, come on!” Rhett made a frustrated gesture with his hands. “There’s no way you can’t know how attractive you are.”

Link curled up into himself in his pumpkin colored chair. “No one’s ever told me that. Not anyone whose opinion I cared about, anyway.”

Rhett regarded him thoughtfully. “Can I kiss you?”

This was it, the moment of truth. If Link said yes, he was committing to something that might change everything about his life. If he said no, he was committing to something that might change everything about his life, but in a completely different way.

He made his choice. “Yes.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Kissing Rhett was surprisingly enjoyable. He was gentle and sweet and kept his hands on Link’s hips. His beard tickled Link’s face, but his lips were soft and they tasted a little sweet. Link rested his hands on Rhett’s chest and felt how solid and warm and real he felt. He wanted to crawl into Rhett’s lap and curl up.

But Link’s enjoyment was all physical. He liked Rhett, he trusted Rhett, and Rhett was the person he was closest to, but he didn’t feel any sparks or butterflies.

Rhett pulled back a little and smiled at Link. “Yeah?”

Link could tell his cheeks were flushed. “Yeah.”

“You’re still worried,” Rhett said.

“Yeah. I’m gonna have to take this slow,” Link said. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Rhett pulled him into a hug. He smelled like sandalwood incense and fabric softener, and Link melted into him. “We’re not on a deadline anymore.”

“Thank god for that.” Link shifted his weight and licked his lips. “Um, can I sit in your lap?”

Rhett raised his eyebrows, but he said, “Sure.”

Link snuggled into Rhett’s lap and put his arms around Rhett’s neck. Rhett wrapped his arms around Link. It was just what Link needed after months of stress and grief and fear, and he found himself with tears dripping down his face and soaking into Rhett’s robe.

“Are you okay?” Rhett asked.

“I’ve just needed a hug for a really long time,” Link replied.

Rhett hugged him tighter. “Me too.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link was working away in his office the next morning when his phone chimed. It was an email for Flora.

“Oh, shit,” Link whispered as he read it. He pushed his chair away from the desk and turned around to call Rhett on the intercom. “Hey man, did you see that email from Flora?”

“Uh, no.”

“Well, you need to.”

After a couple minutes, Rhett called back. “That’s awful.”

“I know.” Flora’s older brother Miguel, who lived with their grandparents in rural Mexico, had crashed his motorcycle and suffered a severe head injury, along with a lot of less pressing injuries. Flora was voted “Most Likely to Succeed at Organizing a Medical Evacuation to the United States or At Least Mexico City While Also Finding Care for Aging Grandparents” by the rest of the Martinez family, so she was off to Chiapas for at least a week, maybe more. “I hope he’s gonna be okay.”

“Yeah.” There was a brief pause, filled with staticky crackle. Rhett came back. “Hang on, I’m coming down.”

Link pushed his chair back to the desk and spun around as he waited for Rhett to show up. It didn’t take long before Rhett arrived and leaned against the doorframe in his usual manner. He had on a particularly lurid purple silk robe. “Link, we have a problem.”

“I know.” Rhett and Flora were supposed to meet with their investors in two days. It was a very, very important meeting, and it would have to be rescheduled as soon as Flora came back. Missing it could result in losing a major contract. “Two problems, actually.”

Rhett’s eyes widened as he figured out what the second problem was. “Well, fuck.”

“Yeah…” They were supposed to leave for ten days in Scotland the day after the meeting, but that would put Rhett out of the country when Flora returned. “You better call your parents.”

“Ughhhh.” Rhett groaned and rubbed his face. “We’re gonna have to reschedule. I’m sorry, Link. I know it’s gonna be a pain in the ass.”

“It’s okay,” Link said. “I bought travel insurance for a reason.”

“You are so smart.” Rhett leaned over the desk and hesitated for a moment. Link looked at him and realized Rhett wanted a kiss, so he stretched up to meet Rhett, who gave him a quick peck. “I’m gonna go call my parents.”

“Okay.” Link watched him head down the stairs and chewed his thumbnail. He knew he needed to talk to Rhett, but Rhett seemed pretty happy with where their relationship was going (or at least, where he _thought_ it was going). Link hoped, perhaps naively, that maybe this time would be different, if he just tried harder, if he just relaxed, if he just focused on making Rhett happy. 

Because if he could change for anyone, Link would change for Rhett.


	28. Chapter 28

Flora had enough foresight to include the investors on her email about her brother, so they already knew about the situation when Link called (at some point, he’d become the administrator for Rhett and Flora’s company as well as Rhett’s assistant. Supposedly there’d be a new title and a big bonus when they finally secured a contract, but Link wasn’t holding his breath), but they weren’t particularly happy about it. Neither, Link assured them, was anyone else.

Dealing with the tickets and reservations and bookings for the Scotland trip made him even unhappier. Now that there wasn’t a deadline, Rhett’s parents wanted to wait until spring. Link agreed that going to Scotland in the dead of winter might not be ideal, but now that Rhett was no longer dying, his parents were much pickier about scheduling. To save his sanity, Link got vouchers for the flights and cancelled everything else. Thanks to the travel insurance, he didn’t lose _too_ much of Rhett’s money on nonrefundable deposits. It wasn’t like Rhett would care. Caring about money was Link’s job.

He didn’t finish until after 8pm. Link pillowed his head on his arms and groaned. Some days working for Rhett were harder than others, and this one had been particularly hard.

It had been a particularly rough few days, in fact. The emotional whiplash from Rhett being doomed to Rhett being saved that resulted in a bender of undergrad proportions, the realization that they were too stupid to know that they were in love, the voice in the back of Link’s mind that screamed _How can you be in love with Rhett if you don’t fall in love?_ , the horrible suspicion that he was going to end up breaking Rhett’s heart, not being able to talk to Flora, hours on the phone with airline customer service… if one more thing went wrong, Link was going to lose it.

“Link?” Rhett’s voice was soft. Link glanced up. Rhett stood hesitantly in the door, hand on the frame. “Are you okay?”

Link laid his head back down and shook it. He heard footsteps coming towards the desk and then felt a large, warm hand on his shoulder. It was immensely comforting.

“I made some chicken curry earlier,” Rhett said. He rubbed his hand slowly across Link’s shoulders. “There’s still plenty left, and if you wanna talk, I’m just gonna be watching some stupid show.”

“Okay.” Link expected Rhett to leave like he usually did, but instead he stayed put and rubbed Link’s back for a little longer. Link could feel some of the tension draining out of him. His lifestyle didn’t lend itself to much physical contact (although Flora’s kids now demanded hugs and piggyback rides every time he visited), but he hadn’t realized how much he missed it until the last few days.

Tyler was probably right. He should have kissed Rhett right away.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link relaxed some over the next few days, but he didn’t think he’d be able to really believe the curse was broken until the date of Rhett’s death had passed.

They talked about it, a little. Link asked Rhett how he seemed so stable, even before the curse was broken. Rhett was quiet for a long while. “It gets me at night, when I try to sleep,” he said. “And I could tell it was part of the ‘suffering’, you know? So I didn’t bother trying to do anything about it, because it was going to end soon enough… probably should do something now, though.”

“Probably,” Link agreed. “I think we’re all pretty traumatized.”

“Yeah…”

Life went on. Rhett installed the Escher window in Link’s room. When the sun hit it, the black tiles turned out to be cobalt and the white tiles were a milky, opalescent pink. Link spent an afternoon watching it slowly cycle through patterns. It took eighty three minutes to complete the loop. He could have asked Rhett, but that would have taken some of the magic out of it.

They didn’t hear anything from Flora, but Link did get an update from her husband, Javier. Flora’s brother had been taken to a hospital in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas, where he’d undergone some sort of emergency brain surgery. Flora was trying to get him moved to Mexico City as quickly as possible, but for the meantime he was doing as well as could be hoped.

With no curse, no Flora, and no trip to Scotland, Rhett and Link were left strangely rudderless. Rhett suggested taking a short road trip. “We can get on Atlas Obscura and visit some weird art or a haunted house or whatever.”

“Is there anywhere magical we could visit?” Link asked. “People talk about magic like it’s dead or rare, but it really isn’t. There’s all kinds of magic everywhere! I mean… your mom’s a bloodstopper. Who ever heard of a bloodstopper?”

Rhett laughed. “I’ll see what I can find.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“You have your makeup?” Rhett asked. “You’re not gonna see anything if you don’t.”

“Oh my god.” Link rolled his eyes and pulled the tube of eyeblack out of his pocket. “See?”

“I just don’t want to drive for five hours with no payoff,” Rhett said as he hefted a cooler into the back of his SUV.

Link rolled his eyes again with a smile. It was very sweet that Rhett had planned the entire weekend trip himself, but it was obvious his personality didn’t lend itself to that kind of task. He wanted to surprise Link, though, who only knew there was going to be a hike, and that Rhett had booked a “really awesome” AirBnB.

They’d been more coupley since the day the Scotland trip had been cancelled. More touches, more hugs, more kisses, some even initiated by Link. He was still figuring out the whole “romantic physical affection” thing, along with the whole “romance” thing in general.

Link had some kind of feelings for Rhett, that was sure. There was no one in the world that he liked more, trusted more, wanted to spend time with more. Link had never been as happy and as comfortable as he’d been at the pink house before the curse, and he hoped they’d be able to get back to that.

This was probably the closest Link was ever going to get to romantic love, and he wanted Rhett to be happy, so he stepped willingly (if a bit uncertainly) in the role of boyfriend.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“It’s a train car!” Link exclaimed in delight as Rhett pulled up to the AirBnB. “Like the Boxcar Children!”

Rhett laughed. “Hopefully it’s a lot nicer than their boxcar. C’mon, let’s check it out.”

The train car had a little deck with a couple deck chairs and a few empty planters. Link opened the door to find that the interior had been renovated in a style that was probably described as “Pullman car meets rustic cabin” in the listing, complete with a little wood burning stove that already had a fire going.

Rhett collapsed down on the couch with a groan and stretched his legs out as Link explored the rest of the cabin. There was an enclosure at one end of the car, and Link slid back a paneled door to reveal two bunks. “Oh, it’s a sleeping compartment!”

“You get the top bunk,” Rhett called.

“Okay!” There was a bathroom with a shower so small that Link didn’t think he’d be able to move in it, a kitchenette with a minifridge and a portable burner, and a dining area with two benches facing each other. Link thought they might have been salvaged from an actual dining car. “This is so cool.”

“Wait until you see what we _really_ came out here for,” Rhett said.

Link plopped down on the couch next to him. “The magic thing?”

“Mmhmm.” Rhett took his hand and interlaced their fingers together. “That’s tomorrow, though. What do you want to do tonight?”

Link rested his head on Rhett’s shoulder. “I dunno. Just make some tacos and hang out, I guess.”

Rhett kissed the top of his head. “Sounds good to me.”


	29. Chapter 29

Link slowly surfaced into wakefulness and blinked into the unfamiliar darkness a few times. It was too dark and too quiet, and it took him a few seconds to remember that he was in a boxcar converted into a cabin that seemed like it was alone in a clearing in the woods (but was actually only a few hundred yards from the owner’s house). He closed his eyes and began drifting off again when there was a whimper from underneath him. Link’s eyes popped back open.

 _It gets me at night_. 

“Rhett?” he whispered as he peered over the edge of the bunk. There was a rustle of fabric as Rhett shifted in his sleep, but no answer. Link sighed and rolled over himself, but froze as he heard another sound from Rhett. He couldn’t tell if Rhett was talking in his sleep or if he was crying. 

Link rolled back over. “Rhett!” he hissed, once again getting no answer. He leaned over the edge of the bunk to touch Rhett’s shoulder, but nearly overbalanced and fell. “Shit.” Link carefully climbed down and leaned over Rhett’s bunk, shivering. It was _cold_ in the train car. “Rhett, are you okay?”

Rhett sighed and shifted his weight again. In the faint moonlight that illuminated the cabin, Link was shocked to see his lashes were wet with tears. Led half by impulse and half by a need to warm up, he climbed into the (surely larger than was historically accurate but still not big) bunk with Rhett. It was much warmer than his own bunk. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he murmured, as he gently wiped Rhett’s cheeks. The taller man didn’t wake, but he did quiet down and curl up. Link tucked himself behind Rhett as the (inaccurately named, in this case) big spoon. He kissed the back of Rhett’s shoulder through his thermal shirt. “I got you.”

Rhett didn’t stir, so Link closed his eyes and drifted off.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link woke a split second before he hit the floor with a thud.

When he opened his eyes with a groan, Rhett was looking down at him with concern. “Jesus, Link, are you okay?”

Link sat up gingerly and rubbed his shoulder. “Yeah, no thanks to you.” It was close enough to dawn that he could see clearly.

“What?”

“You just shoved me off the edge!”

Rhett did a sort of double take, from Link to the upper bunk and back to Link, wide eyed. 

“What?” Link asked as he got up. “Scoot over, it’s fucking cold.” He climbed back in as Rhett wordlessly complied. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Uh.” Rhett didn’t reply until Link was back under the wonderfully warm covers, pressed against his side. “Why were you in my bed?”

“You were crying in your sleep,” Link said. “And I was cold.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Yeah…”

Link’s heart sank.

“...but only so you can put some wood on the fire,” Rhett said. “I’d do it, but there’s someone blocking me in.”

Link laughed in relief. “Okay, be right back.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett held up a hand. “Stop, I think this is it.”

Link managed to not walk into him. He looked around. The forest here looked the same as it did for the last several miles, dead and brown. “You sure?”

“Um…” Rhett looked down at the tool in his hand. It was a circle of clear glass tubing, like a transparent doughnut, with a red and white marble inside that rolled around and around when Rhett flicked his wrist. Link had no idea how it worked or how to read it, because Rhett’s explanation had been far too complicated for him to follow. All he caught was that it was called Mpemba’s Improved Torus, and it somehow measured levels of ambient magic. “Yeah, see?” He held the torus out for Link to inspect.

Link stared at Rhett blankly. “I can’t read that.”

“Oh.” Rhett stuck the torus into a padded pouch and tucked it away into an inner pocket of his jacket. He pointed off to the left. “It’s just over there, like a couple hundred yards maybe.”

Link was immediately skeptical. “You wanna go off trail?”

“We kind of have to.”

“You’re _never_ supposed to go off trail,” Link said. “I’ve read enough missing persons accounts to know that.”

Rhett heaved an exasperated sigh. “Oh my _god_. Look, you can see the highway from here, right? We have cell service. My parents know we’re out here. Javier knows we’re out here. The AirBnB host knows we’re out here. It’s not gonna turn into _127 Hours_ , okay? Just, like, make a note of the GPS coordinates here or something.”

“I _guess_ ,” Link said, pulling out his phone. “But if we die I don’t want to hear any complaining.”

“Deal.” Rhett headed off into the wood, Link following him. They climbed over logs, pushed past branches, and untangled themselves from brambles. Rhett stopped a few times to take measurement with the torus. On the third stop, he held a hand up to his ear. “Hear that?”

Link stood still and listened. At first, the only thing he heard was the hum of cars on the highway, but when there was a lull, he heard a watery trickle. “A stream?”

“Yep.” A few minutes later, they came to a small creek. Rhett gave the torus a spin and pointed upstream. “Not far now. Look for the foundation of a building.”

“Is that it?” Link asked after they’d been picking their way along the streambed for a while. He pointed to a pile of neatly arranged rocks on the other side of the creek. “It’s pretty fallen apart…”

“Yeah! C’mon.” The two men carefully stepped from rock to rock across the stream. Rhett spread his hands out in an expansive gesture. “Ta-da!”

The foundation was a small rectangle, maybe six by eight feet, made of dry stacked stones. Inside was another stone structure, this one round with a diameter of about a foot. It was full of water that overflowed and trickled down to join the creek.

Link pulled his eye black from his pocket. “Was it a spring house?” he asked as he put a stripe under each eye.

“Yeah.” Rhett produced the Ivanov Resonator and handed it over. “Check out the spring.”

“Oh, _wow_.” The spring sparkled with magic. It wasn’t anything like the shimmering, pulsing magic at Rhett’s house. It was bright and random and _wild_. “It’s a natural magic source!”

Rhett sat on the edge of the foundation and pulled out a resonator for himself. “It’s called Cushman’s Spring. It was ‘discovered’ in 1863 by a former gold miner named Horatio Cushman. Of course, Native people had known about it for centuries.”

“Of course,” Link said. 

“Anyway, the Native population had been decimated by colonisation and the survivors never revealed the location of the spring, so when Cushman ‘discovered’ it, no one knew that it was anything but a regular spring.”

Link sat next to Rhett “What did he do with it?”

“Evil, of course,” Rhett said. “Ambient magic was pretty diminished by then, so Cushman had a huge advantage. He did a lot of subtle persuasion spells and got rich and powerful, but got overconfident and people began to realize that he was using magic on them. He ended up leaving town before things got really ugly, but no one could figure out where he got his power until the 80s when a magical historian named David Freeman figured it out by going through his journals and comparing them to Native oral histories.”

“How come nobody uses it now?” Link asked as he watched the magic crackle and pop over the running water. It was beautiful in a way he’d never seen before.

“It’s still pretty secret. David Freeman told the local Native tribes where it was, so they use it, but he’s never published his work. He’s trying to write a book about the spring without giving away where it is. Anyway, he owed me a favor because I loaned him some of my magic artifacts a few years ago, so I asked. I mean, what was the worst that could happen? He’d say no?” Rhett shrugged. “But he swore me to secrecy and told me. He’s a pretty great guy.”

“Wow.” Link still couldn’t tear his eyes away from the spring. “What would happen if I drank it?”

Rhett laughed. “You might get giardia. It’s traditionally been used to power spells, like give them some extra _oomph_. It’s not, like, a magic potion.”

“Oh. Are you gonna take some home?”

“Nah,” Rhett said. “That’s a little too Cushman for me.”

“Mm.” Link turned to give Rhett a quick kiss. The quick little kisses were growing on him. They made Rhett so happy, and that made Link happy. “Thank you for showing this to me.”

Rhett kissed him back. “You’re welcome. Next time we go on a trip, you’ll have to show _me_ something special.”

 _Next time we go on a trip_. The filled Link with warm feelings. He smiled and rested his head on Rhett’s shoulder. 


	30. Chapter 30

The night, after grilled cheese and tomato soup and hot chocolate spiked with Bailey’s, Rhett was already in his bunk when Link came into the sleeping compartment. He hesitated for a moment before putting his foot on the rung of the little ladder up to the upper bunk.

“Oh, you’re not--” Rhett began.

“I mean, if you--” Link said at the same time. He snapped his mouth shut and looked at Rhett expectantly, once again forcing Rhett to say it.

Rhett scooted over to make a little room for Link. “Please? It’s cold.”

Link grinned and climbed into the bunk. “It’s fucking freezing,” he agreed. “Next time, don’t pick a place without insulation.”

“Oh, I’ve learned my lesson,” Rhett assured him as they got comfortable. “I’ll just have my assistant do it next time.”

“Well, it’ll be his turn anyway.” Link closed his eyes and relaxed against Rhett’s side. “‘Night, Rhett.”

Link felt a kiss on the back of his head. “‘Night, Link.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett slept soundly through the night, but Link had a dream where he drank from the spring and it gave him all the abilities he didn’t have. He fell in love with Rhett, real love, romantic love, the kind people wrote songs and made movies about, but Rhett rejected him for using the spring’s magic for personal gain.

Link woke with a start. Rhett was right there, in the role of big spoon, breathing deeply with an arm around Link’s middle. Link knew Rhett would never really reject him, but the dream had seemed so real.

It took a long, long time before Link was able to fall back asleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link was glad he wasn’t at the wheel. There was such a thick, cold fog that there was almost no visibility. Rhett had to put all of his attention into driving instead of chatting with Link like he had on the drive up.

This was quite alright with Link, who had a lot to think about. A few hours ago, he’d woken up in Rhett’s bunk as the little spoon. Usually, he would have stayed there enjoying the warmth and closeness, but Rhett’s morning wood was pressed firmly against his butt cheek. After a couple minutes, Link decided he wasn’t ready to deal with that, so he slipped out of bed without waking Rhett.

He had time to think about it now, though. Link watched the fog condense into droplets that rolled down his window as he thought. It had been just over a week since he broke the curse, and for all that he’d asked Rhett to take it slow, Link thought that they’d been moving pretty darn fast.

The first night he kissed Rhett, Link hadn’t even been able to _think_ about having sex with him, but he could now, and did. There had been a lot of kissing and physical contact and full-on bedsharing since then, and Link had enjoyed most of it. He thought Rhett was striking, too, with his bright green eyes and dark honey curls. Link wasn’t going to initiate anything, but if Rhett did… Link probably wasn’t going to stop him.

“You _fucking_ asshole,” Rhett hissed, snapping Link out of his thoughts. He was gripping the wheel so tight his knuckles were white. “Would it kill you to put your headlights on, dickhead? Jesus _Christ_.”

“Hey,” Link said softly. He reached over and put his hand on Rhett’s thigh. “You’re doing fine.”

Rhett took a deep breath and blew it out, visibly relaxing. He took his hand off the wheel to give Link’s hand a quick squeeze. “Thanks.”

“Mmhmm.” Link gave his leg a squeeze and turned back to the droplets on his window, a little smile on his face.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Oh, I just got an email from Flora!” Link exclaimed. They were almost home, the fog was gone, and Rhett was in a much better mood.

“What’s it say?” Rhett asked.

“Um…” Link scrolled through the message. “They’re in Mexico City… Miguel had another brain surgery with an actual neurosurgeon this time, and apparently the doctor in Chiapas, who is very much NOT a neurosurgeon, did a really fantastic job, so his prognosis is really good.”

“That’s great!”

“I know! So they’re actually coming back to the US on Tuesday. Their mom lives in Houston so Miguel’s gonna go to a rehab place there for a while before staying with her.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah. And then…” Link raised his eyebrows. “Uh, she wants to reschedule that investor meeting ASAP. She’s gonna come over on Wednesday so you can get ready.”

Rhett glanced over with a frown. “She’s not gonna take any time off?”

“Yeah, after the meeting, I guess,” Link said. “It’s not like you have a lot of time if you want that contract.”

“No, I guess not.”

“So what should I tell her?”

“Tell her okay, I guess,” Rhett said. Link nodded and started typing. “And that we’re glad her brother’s okay.”

“Well, _duh_.” Link sent his response. “I’ll call tomorrow and reschedule.”

“Okay.” Rhett sounded a little sad. 

Link looked over at him. “You alright?”

“I just wish we could have stayed longer, is all.”

“We can go somewhere after your meeting,” Link said. “No deadlines.”

“No deadlines,” Rhett repeated with a smile.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett didn’t invite Link into his bed at home that night, and Link didn’t ask. It seemed to him like maybe that was the kind of thing that could only happen elsewhere, sort of like, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. 

A couple nights later, though, Link _did_ find himself in Rhett’s bed, mildly buzzed and without any pants on. Rhett was tipsy and pantsless, too. The evening had started innocently enough, with some stupid action movie they’d both seen a dozen times on TV and Link’s leftover rum in some kind of hot apple cider cocktail that Rhett had whipped up. At some point their lounging against each other on the couch turned into kissing, which turned into Rhett running his hands over Link’s chest and down his legs, whispering, “Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” Link whispered back, giggling.

“What about… this?” Rhett asked, grabbing his ass.

“Yeah,” Link laughed. “That’s okay, too.”

They went through a few more rounds of this before Rhett asked, “So do you wanna go upstairs?”

And Link, who was perfectly positioned in the middle of the Venn diagram of “just the right level of tipsy” and “ridiculously fond of Rhett” and had already made this decision, happily said, “Yeah.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Really? You never notice?” Rhett asked as he peeled Link’s shirt off.

“Nope. No clue.”

“It’s, like, every time we go somewhere, man!” Rhett exclaimed. “All kinds of people, just eyefuckin’ you all over the place.”

Link snorted and pulled Rhett back down next to him. “What about you, huh? You got a lot of attention on Grindr even when you had that awful picture.”

“It was Tinder!”

“Whateverrrrr.” Link had never had as much fun in bed as he was having with Rhett. They were both laughing and stripped down to their underwear and Rhett had taken control, straddling Link and grinding their erections together in a way that made some lonely neuron buried deep, deep in Link’s brain light up in a way it never had before. It really didn’t hurt that Rhett kept telling him how smart and beautiful and clever he was.

A few minutes later, though, Rhett pulled back a little. “Does this feel weird to you?”

Link, who was quite possibly going to cum from something other than his own hand for once in his life, managed to croak out, “What?”

“You know, like...hooking up with a friend because you’re bored?” Rhett said, oblivious to Link’s distress. “Not that I’ve never done that.”

Link whimpered in frustration. “If it’s too weird, you can stop, but please, _please_ , just this once…”

Something in his voice got through to Rhett, who only hesitated for a second before pulling Link close again. He licked Link’s neck, from the hollow at the bottom of his throat up to his Adam’s apple, which felt far more amazing than Link would have ever expected.

Rhett wasn’t laughing anymore. He was sweeter and gentler and more serious, maybe because he knew Link really needed it and maybe because he knew it really was just this once.

When Link came, with Rhett over him with one arm around his waist and his other hand on the back of Link’s head, he thought, _oh_.

 _I kinda get it now_.


	31. Chapter 31

When Rhett kissed his cheek and let him go a few moments later, Link remembered that he should probably return the favor. He rolled onto his side and put his hand on Rhett’s hip. “Do you want me to…?”

“No!” Rhett said, sharper than he meant to judge by the guilty look on his face. “No, I just… I’ll meet you downstairs in a couple minutes, okay?”

Link pulled his hand back, stung. “Oh.”

“I’m not upset with you! I’m just really confused and I need to talk to you before we do anything else and I can’t do that when I’m--” Rhett gestured at his crotch in frustration. Link took in his erection and the conspicuous wet smear on the front of his boxers and allowed that yes, that could be pretty distracting.

He had an even larger wet smear on his underwear. “I’ll, um, see you in a few minutes,” Link said, and slipped out of Rhett’s bedroom.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

By the time Rhett came down, Link had already made a mug of hot chocolate, turned on the gas fireplace, and wrapped himself in a fleece blanket.

“You look cozy,” Rhett said as he dropped into his usual spot on the couch.

“I _am_ cozy,” replied Link, who had specifically gotten cozy in his chair instead of the couch so Rhett couldn’t steal his blanket. “So… what was all that about?”

Rhett made a face. “We’re supposed to be in love, right?”

“Is that an actual question?” asked Link, blatantly dodging it.

“I don’t know!” Rhett groaned miserably, hands over his face. “The curse broke, and I _want_ to be in love with you, but… I don’t think I am?”

“Uh…”

“And I think you can tell, because you pull back sometimes,” he continued. “And I’m so sorry, Link. I just… I dunno. I feel like I’m trying to force something that isn’t there.”

“Like with Adam?”

Rhett barked a surprised little laugh. “Kind of, I guess. Different motivation, though.”

Link considered that. “You want to be in love with me?”

“I would _love_ to be in love with you,” Rhett said desperately. “And maybe I could be, in time? But right now…” He shook his head. “You’re my best friend and an amazing assistant and I don’t want you to leave, but I’d understand if you did.”

“I’m not gonna leave! Well, not until after your contract meeting.”

“Oh, fuck me, I forgot about that.” Rhett dropped his head onto the back of the couch and let out a groan. 

“I’m teasing,” Link said. “I’m not in love with you either.” It was still a terrifying thing to say, even if the lack of feeling was mutual. 

Rhett snapped his head back upright and stared at him with wide eyes. “ _What_?”

“I’m not in love with you,” Link repeated, shrugging. “I’ve never been in love with anybody.”

“Ever?”

Link shook his head. “And I don’t really like sex, either. I’m kind of defective.”

An expression of horror washed over Rhett’s face. “Oh, god, I didn’t--”

“No, no, no no no!” Link rushed to reassure him. “That was _very_ consensual.”

“Oh.” Rhett shook his head a little. “Man, I have about a million questions.”

“Ask away.” Link leaned forward to put down his empty mug. “You got me off and no one else had ever done that, so you might as well.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Huh.” Rhett considered that. “Do you jerk off?”

Link snickered. “Yeah, but it’s like… a body maintenance thing. Like cleaning out your ears.”

“Ew.” Rhett laughed. “Have you ever had, like, real sex?” He made an obscene gesture with the index finger of his left hand and the circle of his thumb and index finger of his right hand.

Link held up his right hand, thumb and index finger in a circle. “Only a couple times. Didn’t really like it. I can’t be the--” he poked his left index finger in the circle “--guy, either.”

Rhett chewed on his lip as he took stock of this new information. “I don’t think you’re defective,” he said.

“Only ‘cause you’re not in love with me.”

“I could never think you were defective, Link.” Rhett dropped his head back onto the couch again. “Now what?”

“Oof.” That was the real question. Link wasn’t in love with Rhett, but he didn’t want to give up _everything_ that went along with a romantic relationship. The closeness, the hugs, the bedsharing, even some of the kisses. “Do you want to go back to the way it was before? Just… friendly housemates?” he asked hesitantly.

“No. Do you?”

“God, no.” Relief flooded through Link’s body. “I’ve been so lonely, Rhett, for years and years. I just sort of gave up and started looking for live-in positions instead. I don’t know what this is and I don’t know where you want to draw the lines, but I want whatever you’ll let me have.”

Rhett raised an eyebrow and made the sex gesture again.

“Oh, um, maybe?” Link could tell his face was bright red. “I don’t really like anything involving mucus membranes, but maybe for a special occas--”

He was cut off by Rhett throwing his head back in laughter. “ _Mucus membranes_!”

“You know what I mean!”

Rhett got control of himself. “I don’t want to have sex with you if you don’t want it.”

“I liked what we did earlier,” Link said. His face still felt hot, but it was a relief to be able to say these things. He’d been keeping this part of himself secret for so long, but he knew that Rhett would understand. “It kind of let me understand why people like it so much.”

“You want to be friends with benefits that don’t involve mucus membranes?” Rhett giggled a little at ‘mucus membranes’.

“I wanna be friends who hug and sit on the couch together and maybe share a bed sometimes,” Link said. “And if that turns into benefits sometimes… maybe I’d like that, too.”

“Sounds kinda like boyfriends.”

“Rhett, I am never going to fall in love with you,” Link said in a serious tone. “You might fall in love with me eventually, but I’m never going to get butterflies or see sparks or any of that stuff that people write songs about. I care about you, probably more than I’ve ever cared about anyone, but I am never going to fall in love with you, and you need to understand that.”

Rhett nodded. “I need some time to think that over.”

“Of course.”

“But if you want, you can come sleep in my bed tonight, because I like that.”

A big grin stretched across Link’s face. “I like it, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter and then a little epilogue


	32. Chapter 32

Link opened the pantry as soon as the bell rang. “Welcome back,” he said, and held his arms open for a hug.

“Thanks.” Flora looked like she’d aged about ten years. There were lines between her eyebrows and around her mouth that hadn’t been there the last time Link saw her. Even her hair looked dull and tired. “I’m glad to be back, you know?”

“I bet. How’s Miguel? You got him all set up in the rehab place?”

“Yeah, private room and everything. He woke up a little, too. He squeezed my mom’s hand and we both just started sobbing. Oh, god, I’m gonna cry now if I think about it too much.” She sniffled and wiped her face, laughing a little. 

Link gave her a final squeeze and released her. “And your grandparents?”

“I hired a neighbor to help them for now. My dad wants them to move to Monterrey to live with him and his wife, but they’re the stubbornest people on Earth. I’m just going to let the three of them figure it out.” Flora dismissed them with a flick of her hand. “I did my part.”

“Yeah you did.” They made their way up to Rhett’s lab. Flora told Link a little more about her trip, the highlight of which was her abuela’s cooking.

“I would sell my soul for a tamale, and I’d sell your soul for-- Rhett!” He was waiting at the top of the stairs to grab her in a hug. “God, I’m so ready to do something I _know_ I can do.”

Rhett had questions about her trip, and so did Link, so he settled sideways in the reading chair so he could face the other two at their stools at the long table. Link was extremely impressed with how resourceful and tenacious Flora had been in rescuing her brother, and decided that if _he_ ever needed to be rescued, he wanted Flora to be the one to do it.

“So what have you two been up to?” she asked finally. “Anything interesting happen?”

“We went to Cushman’s Spring,” Rhett said. “David Freeman owed me a favor and I thought Link should see some natural magic.”

“No shit!” Flora was deeply impressed. She turned to Link. “What did you think?”

“It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Link said. It was the simple truth.

“While I am _deeply_ envious, I was actually curious about what happened after you broke the curse. ‘Cause there’s like…” Flora gestured back and forth between them. “Some weird energy between you two that wasn’t there before.” 

Link looked at Rhett and raised his eyebrows. “Why don’t you take this one.”

Rhett looked like he wanted to sink into the floor, but to his credit, he answered.“Um, so, Link kissed me and it broke the curse.”

“Yeah, I heard about that.”

“And it had to be true love, right? So we sort of decided we’d try to be an item.”

“Uh-huh.” Flora sounded extremely skeptical.

“And it was okay, but there’s no passion. It’s like… trying to date your friend?” Rhett held up his hands in a shrug. “So we don’t really know what we’re doing now.”

Flora looked back and forth between the two men in disbelief. “ _Dios mio._ I leave you alone for a week and _this_ is what you get up to?”

“Um, yes?” Link hazarded.

“The two of you, I swear…” Flora shook her head. “Look, you had a great relationship before, right? Friends, housemates, business partners, whatever, you were happy with each other.”

“Yeah…”

“So _that_ relationship is what broke the curse! There’s more than one kind of love. You of all people should know that, Link.” She turned to Rhett. “And you! You magicians and your sympathetic magic. You write ‘love’ in a spell and don’t specify enough, and you get situations like this.”

“I didn’t--” Rhett began.

Flora cut him off. “I know you didn’t write this one, but I know you’ve done similar things. See, this is why I only do spells based on math.”

That sparked an argument between Rhett and Flora about the merits of different kinds of magic, which Link ignored because he’d heard it all before. Instead, he thought about the different kinds of love.

He loved his family, of course, and a few close friends who were now unfortunately far away. He loved the dog he had growing up, and he loved the professor he had in college who noticed that Link was lost and drifting and gently pushed him to get help. He loved peanut butter and old country music and the indigo kimono Rhett gave him and his crappy old car with all its quirks.

And he thought that Flora was probably right, that he really did love Rhett. Not in a sparks and butterflies way, but in a constant warm trust. He would be there for Rhett and Rhett would be there for him, they would work together as colleagues and live together in the pink house with the magic doors. They were something more than friends but less than lovers. Link didn’t know if there was a name for that, but he didn’t really need one. 

He just needed Rhett.

“Hey!” he called across the lab. “Rhett!”

Rhett paused in making some point that was accompanied by the lifted index finger of explanation. “What?”

“I think I do love you,” Link said. “But like a brother, maybe?” That probably wasn’t right either, but he was an only child so he couldn’t be sure.

Flora snorted.

“Shut up,” Rhett told her. “I love you, too.” He turned back to Flora. “And if you’re so smart, how come you didn’t figure out that stuff about different kinds of love a year ago, huh? Could have saved us a _lot_ of time and heartache.”

“You didn’t figure it out either!” Flora exclaimed. “You didn’t even figure out you loved Link until like thirty seconds ago.”

As Link watched them squabble goodnaturedly, he decided that Flora must also love Rhett, because she hadn’t leapt over the table to strangle him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“I guess I should tell you my secret,” Rhett said as they stood in the kitchen after seeing Flora off.

“A secret?” Link asked. “Just one?”

“Yeah, c’mon.” Rhett led Link towards the mudroom between the kitchen and the back lot.

“If the back door is magic, I’m going to hurt you,” Link said.

“No magic here.” The mudroom was the one place in the house that Rhett hadn’t restored. The walls were knotty pine paneling, and Rhett reached up and pressed a button that had been camouflaged in a knot. Link had never noticed it before. There was a click and a panel silently swung open to reveal a very steep, very narrow, set of stairs. “Just regular trickery.”

Link gaped at it, open mouthed. _This_ was how Rhett managed to avoid him! Every time Rhett said, “I came down the stairs,” he hadn’t _really_ been lying.

“I guess that’s why you kept moving the recycling bin when I put it there,” Link said finally, making Rhett laugh. “Where does it go?”

“Go find out.” Rhett reached inside and flipped a light switch. “There were the servants’ stairs originally, and whoever had the house before me put in the secret doors. I liked ‘em so much I just kept them.”

“Jesus, these are treacherous.” Link couldn’t imagine being a parlourmaid and trying to traverse the stairs in a long dress, petticoats, and heeled boots, probably carrying something awkward.

“Yeah, you should have seen them before I added the lighting and handrail.”

“No thanks.” Link reached the top, Rhett a couple stairs below him. “How do I open this?”

Rhett leaned forward, pressing his chest against Link’s back. “See?” he said, pointing. “There’s a latch.”

“Ah.” After a few moments of fiddling, Link undid it and swung the door open. He burst into laughter. “Your closet!”

“Yep.” Rhett closed the door behind them with a click. It had a shoe organizer hanging on it, holding shoes and belts and all sorts of accessories, none of which Link had ever seen Rhett wear. “Now you know.”

Link put his arms around Rhett’s middle. “I know two things.”

Rhett wrapped his arms around Link’s shoulders. “Yeah?”

“I know about your secret door, and I know I love you.”

Rhett kissed the top of his head. “I love you, too.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The hallway door opened and Rhett came and put his phone down on Link’s desk. “Okay, you’re on speaker.”

Link gave him a quizzical look and pointed to the phone. “Who is that?” he mouthed.

“Detective Bubblegum,” Rhett whispered back as a woman began to speak. 

“Anyway, as I was saying, we’ve located Aimee Bradley.” Link’s eyebrows show up. “And she is currently in Singapore.”

“Singapore?”

“Yes, Singapore. Specifically, Changi Women’s Prison for the next five to ten years.”

“For _what_?” Rhett asked.

“Smuggling illegal goods to sell on the black market, including, if you’ll believe, chewing gum.” The detective snickered and snapped her own gum. “Sounded like she had quite the business going.”

Rhett looked up at Link, lost. “So… now what?” 

“Well, my understanding is that she had a lawyer trying to get her sentence reduced, but now that there’s an attempted murder charge waiting for her as soon as she walks out that door? Who knows. Call your lawyer.”

“Wow. Okay, thanks for letting us know.” Rhett ended the call and shook his head. “Chewing gum.”

“Wild,” Link said.

Rhett sighed. “I still wonder if the Aimee I was friends with for so long was actually her, or if she put on an act the entire time.” He didn’t talk about his friendship with Aimee much. Link thought he’d probably need professional help to untangle his thoughts. Luckily, Rhett had recently started seeing a therapist. Link had already noticed that his nightmares were lessening. It probably helped that the curse deadline of “a year and a day” had already passed a few months back.

Things were going well elsewhere in their lives, too. Rhett and Flora easily secured their door contract, which Rhett celebrated by firing Link as his personal assistant and hiring him as company administrator (which didn’t actually change anything). Flora immediately took a month long leave of absence so she could “sleep for three weeks straight”.

Link was happy, really, genuinely happy. Somehow he’d managed to find what he’d always wanted but thought he could never have: a partner who understood him, who always respected his boundaries, who loved him for who he was. Every day, he was astonished and thankful that he had Rhett in his life.

Their relationship became less romantically physical once Flora called them out for being stupid and trying to force was wasn’t there. The two men shared a bed (usually Rhett’s) a few times a week, snuggled up together on the couch, and stood much closer to each other than most people were comfortable with. The kisses dwindled to pecks on cheeks and foreheads and hands, and they never did end up hooking up again. They referred to each other as “partners” and didn’t elaborate.

Link wasn’t in love with Rhett, but he did love Rhett fiercely, and Rhett loved him back just as much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short epilogue tomorrow!


	33. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read and commented on this! I truly appreciate it.

“Man, where are we going?” Rhett asked. “Are you just driving around randomly?”

“I promise I have a destination in mind,” answered Link, who was in fact driving randomly on his way to his destination. He was finally ready to show Rhett his someplace special.

“So is this place somewhere I’ve been before?”

“Oh, yes. Many times.”

“A restaurant?”

“No.”

“Movie theater?”

“No.”

“Uh…” Rhett thought. “Do I like this place?”

“Yes!”

“Is it a-- are you turning around?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you forget your phone or something?”

“No,” Link said. “Just hang on for a few minutes. You’ll see.”

Rhett fidgeted but managed to stay quiet until Link pulled up in front of the house. “Ta da!”

“This is our house,” Rhett said.

“Yep!” Link unbuckled his seat belt. “It’s my special place. C’mon.” He led Rhett up the walkway. It was spring again, two years since he’d first come to the pink house, and the pink tulips were blooming again.

“Really?” Rhett asked. “It’s just a house.”

“No it isn’t!” Link protested. “Look, I wanted to live here as soon as I walked in the door. The stained glass and the crystal ball and the carpet… I’d never seen anything like it. And then you showed me the magic door and that pretty much blew my mind. But that’s not why it’s special. It’s special because of _you_.”

Rhett smiled and put an arm around Link’s shoulders. “You’re pretty special yourself.”

“I know.” Link wrapped his arms around Rhett and gave him a squeeze. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Rhett kissed the top of his head. “Let’s go take a nap.”

“Sounds fantastic.” They walked up to the door with the stained glass panel, which showed pink tulips that matched the ones out front. It unlocked itself for them. The two men entered their home, hand in hand, and Link carefully closed the door behind them. They were just where they needed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> visit @pinecontents on tumblr for more nonsense and cat pictures


End file.
